


(To be Deleted) The Dark Dragon: Part 1: The Bringer of the Storm

by DefiantCandle17



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Anti-Hero, Bad girls want heroes trope, Dark, Dark Fantasy, Dark Magic, Dark Romance, Darkness, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Epic Battles, Epic Love, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Forbidden, Forbidden Love, High Fantasy, Hope to publish one day, M/M, Opposites Attract, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Prophecy, Redemption, Sexual Chemistry, Undead, Villainesses Want Heroes Trope, Villainous Crush Trope, court intrigue, fall of a city, heroes want the bad girl trope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 71,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27766741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefiantCandle17/pseuds/DefiantCandle17
Summary: Due to lack of interest from the Ao3 community, I have decided that this project is to be scrapped and deleted within the next few days.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue

The blood red gem sat cradled in the centre of the obsidian temple’s chamber, held in the centre of the room on a dais, supported by a black marble pillar with metal thin claws that held the flawless crystal in place.

It thrummed with a silent, yet undeniable power, its very presence oppressive enough in its inexorable force to unnerve and silence even the brightest of spirits. It was this, this crystalline prison that served as the phylactery of a lich, a powerful sorcerer who wished to deny the ravages of time and death, yet could not escape the confines of his mortal body, save the sealing of his soul in a near-indestructible vessel.

Neferiti could feel its power, dripping with malice, radiating power, the raw spark of ambition found only in the frail sparks of life that mortals only could possess. The will to take on all the world, mated with the desire to master all its facets and realms by knowledge in sheer, frantic, desperate denial of the fleeting nature of one’s life, ebbing away with each grain of sand that fell from the glass of time, numbering the days of one’s merely finite existence.

Neferiti felt this energy the strongest, perhaps because it resonated with her own burning heart, her soul scored with the fiery spurs of ambition, and the bondage of destiny, the destiny she had chosen for herself by forging her own path as well. The esoteric, the occult, the dark, whispered secrets, whispers of forbidden knowledge, domains of Tehuti, the master of the hieroglyphic runes, and the wandering Vodan, who obtained the secrets of rune magic and knowledge through self-mutilation and sacrifice. All of them, all the dark knowledge that forged the very fibre of existence, called to her very spirit to absorb themselves in her, and for her to bathe in their secrets.

Neferiti the self-made and true Queen of Regnys and the whole world under Athiral’s burning sun and silent moon, Mistress of Woe, Lady of Wolves and The Hand that Waves Destruction over her foes, will soon add to her many fearsome titles, just as the gods earned theirs, the name of the world’s most powerful sorceress.

The wind whistled across her robe, bound across her chest by a turquoise scarab beetle clasp, and strung around her neck by straps of thin leather, held up around the back of her slender neck by a brooch of sleek gold. The brooch secured the back stretch of silk that covered the middle of her back and widened down to her hips, where her floor-length skirt wafted softly around her ankles, their soft silken opague fabric brushing against the deathly grey skin of her legs.

She could feel the cold of the mountain air across her bare arms. Her headdress sung silently as the cold wind blew through her elaborate crest of hair, held like a war-fan as a proud regal display of intimidating regal and fashionable strength. Her violet eyes glowed as she stalked towards the cracked steps leading up to the central dais on which the crystal stood, her sandalled feet making soft claps of tanned leather on cold hard polished stone.

Her fingers brushed against themselves, her three inch nails scraping like dull scissors against their iron keratin surface. Anticipation. She knew better than to show such petty emotion but she had been hunting for this crystal for months. Her goblin scouts had hounded, interrogated, pillaged and burned temples, crypts and covens to claw any information that would be of use to them, twisting the words out of the dying and the tortured to bring her clues and riddles that sent her scouring through the cold miserable stretch of Herupian forest and desolate mountain ranges in search of her prize. And today it had finally come to fruition. Her hunt for the latest artefact would come to an end.

She reached the steps. And looking up at the gem, and around her, reaching out through the Riven to sense any treachery, traps or ambushes, and finding none, she lifted her right foot, and set foot on the first step.

She advanced up the steps, her goal in sight at the top of the central platform, the imposing dread of the blood gem doing little to balk her burgeoning desire for its power. Her hunger would not be denied. Her ambition would not be curbed. She had come too far in this quest, and far enough along her journey to rule as the rightful queen of all the known world.

The climb seemed to last for the span of an afterthought, a neglectful mind’s attention span on a fleeting matter. She walked on, unhindered by any traps or deception, her skirt parting easily to allow her feet to ascend the steps. And then finally, she reached the top. And the blood gem of Hahkuryax, the sealed vessel of his soul and a knowledge worth a thousand years of dark learning, lay within her reach.

To anyone who witnessed her, she was as still and stoic as death, but inside she trembled with excitement. She steeled herself, retaining enough sense in her ecstatic fervour with a centring breath to keep an eye for the cruellest traps known to her mind and imagination. A concealed panel to collapse the obsidian temple and reduce the black stain in the snow capped mountain into a snow covered eyesore, a rivulet of air that interrupted would send poisoned bolts into her spine. Anything…

But nothing. Nothing irregular along the smooth, obtuse and alienly neat and refined surfaces of the obsidian, black marble floor, columns and walls of the temple’s inner chamber pricked her senses.

And the only obstacle to her obtaining the secret of a miserly old lich was a weary climb through a blisteringly cold mountain trail that killed thirty of her rangers and ten of her hunting wolves when a snow drift came down on them.

Pitiful.

She strode towards the dais. Stepped onto the raised platform. The crystal stood to her chest in the height of its metal jawed cradle. Her violet, shadowy eyes surveyed the metallic brazier before her for any mechanisms. Her body bore the scars of her stupidity and over-eagerness in the past, which permitted traps of previous temples and crypts to try and get the better of her.

But still, there was nothing. There was no way in the blackest of hells, the coldest of heims or the murkiests of rivers that housed the cold dead that it would be as easy as this.

And yet…

She lifted her taloned hands and clasped the crystal firmly with the points of her curved nails. Their length and sturdiness protected her fingers from any undue magics or curse that functioned by burying themselves into her flesh. The gem was impressive in its size, as long as her hand from its base to the tip of her ring finger’s nail. It’s size suggested that it ought to weigh as much as ten stones, maybe more so, and she braced her arms accordingly to lift a heavy object.

She lifted, her claws dug and held into the red pristine surface. There was a vice-like pull of resistance, and she pulled harder, and finally-

-It scraped through from its metal binding, ringing softly with a ageless, ancient hum as the stone brushed the still, clutching fingers of its pedestal. And in her claws, it felt as light as a pebble. Neferiti blinked in surprise, and waited one moment for any further treachery, for the crystal to grow so heavy that it snapped her claws by the root and smashed to pieces on the floor, releasing whatever secrets it held to the wind, lost to time forever.

But nothing happened, and Neferiti lowered the crystal to her breast, its red glow casting murky reddish light on her body and arms. Horrific. Demonic. Unnatural. Hidden in a cave of smooth dead rock to shelter it from prying eyes in a desolate, remote and uninhabitable realm above the world of muck and mud and dank forests below.

It was beautiful, and a contented, satiated sigh escaped through Neferiti’s lips as she beheld such a grim and perfect wonder in her claws. She let go with one hand, and permitted the palm of her hand to touch the gem.

A shiver as sure as a forbidden thrill, like the sweets she stole from her neighbour’s window as a child, or the first time she kissed the stable boy, but more sordid, more wrong, more right, rippled through her very body, goose-pebbling her skin and making every hair stand on end. She clutched it with her other hand, and the warmth, the electricity of the energy bound in this vessel that she felt from the entrance of the temple washed over her in a spectral haze of pride and spite. It was as if the crystal was indeed alive, and proud, as if it carried an air that any who beheld it, let alone touched it, would have to be deeply privileged by all the graces in existence, be they given by blessings or torn away by theft.

This, along with the very darkness, the very spark of desperate, arrogant life, befitting only an old, vainglorious man refusing to part with his fortune, could only confirm to her that this was indeed the lich’s phylactery, the gemstone that contained perhaps, an aspect of his knowledge, or his arcane tomes committed to memory, or perhaps, even, his very soul, as she initially expected.

_By the dark…by the Angel of Dir’thales… And it would be mine. Like this, and everything, it would all be mine!_

Cradling it like a newborn, she lowered the crystal to her left side, and with a twirl of her fingers, she placed a spectral tendril that crept forward and tied itself from her waistband above her lilac silk skirt to the crystal. She let go, and the weight pulled at her side, and held. The tendril was secure. She would not carry this relic out like a silver stealing thief. She was a queen, and above such miserly, base behaviour.

_Mine…mine at last…_

The secrets she would pry out of this blood gem, whether it took her ten weeks or ten months, would bring her the wealth of knowledge needed to elevate herself above her peers. The Council of Shadow would bow before her, and perhaps, perhaps, Astalloth, the Demon Prince of Imps, and her master, nay, even Felgast, the Dark Dragon and the Devouring Serpent of the End, would bow to her and acknowledge her power. They would see beyond her make as a woman and respect her for the mighty goddess of war and sorcery that she was made to be. Their right to rule would soon be hers, and with this knowledge, she would be one step closer to snuffing out her rivals.

The Riven whispered a warning. New. Young. Leather and iron. Steel in his hand. Targe of wood and steel.

“Stop!”

A strong, male voice roared throughout the interior of the chamber.

And Neferiti wished to this day that her own body would not betray her and flinch at the anger and purpose in that voice. Her fingers curled flatly against her palm. Not curled, as her nails would spear into her very hand if they did. Opening her palms, she turned with as much grace and décor as she could muster, despite her already building anger, bubbling up to a breaking point.

A young man, black of hair, bearded and brown of eye, with hair under his nose to suggest an older face than the boy actually was, stood still with his gleaming sword in his hand, and a triangular targe in his left, steel rimmed with a red boss, decorated with the golden sigil of the snarling wyvern dragon with its wings extended in flight and its tail curled under its clawed legs. His metal sabotons cast echoes through the vast hall of the Temple's inner chamber as he made his approach, bold and brazen.

_How…dare he…After everything I have been through, and the men who have died in my service, does he dare to deign to think that he can stop me now._

“Prince Sebastian.” She spoke, with the same imperious, self-certain air in her strong, commanding voice that she knew noble fools like him resented with all the ire in their pent-up, repressed little hearts. “I wish I could say I had been expecting you, but today you gain the satisfaction that you have surprised me. Consider this the first, and the last time you will elicit such a reaction from me.”

“Put that gemstone back.” Sebastian strode forward, his armour rustling under his blue surcoat as he stepped forward, his shoulder-length curled hair rustling as he approached. “You have no right to that relic, and you have no idea what dark power it belongs to!”

“Oh I know fully well who that gemstone belongs to.” Neferiti stepped forward to the top of the stairs. “And he is more than welcome to stop me from taking it.”

A little show of power perhaps to remind the boy who he has just brazenly challenged. A pulse of the Riven through her nailed fingertips and she was airborne, her magick filling the air with a subltle, deadly thrum as she glided effortlessly down the steps she had just climbed, before settling daintily on the bottom.

It had the effect she intended. The Longland prince rolled his shoulders and his chest visibly rose as he felt the sheer power emanating from her. A mere spring in the deep rivers that coursed through her veins.

“How did you get past my guards. As you may have noticed, I was not fool enough to come alone.”

“I had help.” He explained with wariness in his tone. “Your guards are unconscious, not dead. I want to speak with you without blood being shed.”

“Then I will execute them for failing in their task to protect me.” She replied unfazed, and hid the impulse to sneer as Sebastian’s eyes widened and his lips parted in shock. A child.

“Did you think you could resolve this with the diplomacy and priestly compassion like your father? Incapacitate my guards without killing them like your childish fairy tales?” She asked him. “Did that dream world you live in, of chivalry and noble deeds of god-fearing knights and warrior priests addle your brain and make you forget who it was you were facing?”

“I don’t want to fight you, Neferiti.” Sebastian replied, easily withdrawing on the back foot, his ammunition of righteousness and his one hope of establishing a common ground through the feeble chain of morality now severed. “I just want to talk. Just you and me. Outside of this squabble, before it catches fire and sets alight everything we care about.”

“Everything that you care about, prince.” Neferiti sternly corrected, in no mood to concede. “Felgast has promised to help build a better world for sorcerers and witches of my ilk without fear of reprisal for daring to reach too high. The only heights of ambition are the ones imposed by men. The same as your father, and an old inept decrepit world order that you blindly defend like a dog.”

“I promised you I would help change things.” The boy spoke. “I promised that for women and anyone who has suffered under men of my land that I could help build a better world! For Longland, the Lochlands and the Western Elf Isles, all of it!”

“And what did that hollow promise of yours bring us?” Neferiti replied, feeling the embers of an old bitter dispute begin to smoke into kindling in her chest. “Nothing but air and empty sentiments, and a sister of mine in magic’s head, rotting on a pike!”

“I never meant for any of that to happen!” Sebastian stepped forward, gesturing with his arms still holding his sword and shield. Desperate, and afraid. “If I knew better or knew what the Church would do…”

“Of course not. How could you?” Neferiti interrupted. “You, a white man with the luxury of privileges earned by your wealth and the colour of your skin and the gonads between your legs. Your head filled like all men’s with the belief and delusion that this world is yours to plunder and take and dominate and rape to your heart’s desire.”

“You know that’s not what I believe, and if I did, it was long ago.” Sebastian spoke with a waiver in his voice, quailing already at the wall that she had cruelly erected between them, between him as a white man of Herupian heritage and her as a dark skinned woman of Regnyian heritage. “I changed, long before I met you! I learned! I studied! I listened, and I still am! If my privilege has brought me faults, it is that the luxury of my birthright has disconnected me from the true condition of the world. A truth my family tried to shield me from because they feared I would not understand. That is my own fault, and theirs, but I understand now! I understand, and I want to help! Just- don’t do this!”

He stepped forward, closer now than before. “Don’t go down this path! Don’t join with Felgast! Don’t make war on my lands and my neighbouring lands, or the world!”

“And I set out on this path long before I met you. You knew that.” Neferiti darkly replied. “The only language that your kind understand is war, conquest and violence. We tried to change things your way and all it did was mothball into a fiery ball of tar, burning all it touched. Your Church now makes it unsafe to even breathe as a magic user, hanging and quartering even children for daring to speak to fairies. This is the world, Sebastian! The world that you helped create!”

Sebastian shook his head, his mouth open but speechless and silent.

Neferiti spoke, the offensive now hers.

“You men are a blight and a wretched disease on this world. And Felgast, master of my master Astalloth, will cut you out like the pungent consuming tumour you are.”

Sebastian looked up, shaking his head. “Felgast will kill us all.”

“Perhaps. But he’ll honour his vow to wipe the male stain on this world first.” Neferiti spoke with certainty. “And by the time he has exhausted himself on the souls of your kind, I will be more than strong enough to overthrow him. He is by his condition, a male, a child flailing and kicking and lashing out from spite. When he is spent and weak, I will strike him down. And I will be the new goddess of this world. The kind Athiral has needed all along.”

“Felgast is a god. The world consuming serpent.” Sebastian shook his head. “He surplanted the devil. He murdered the god I worshipped and took his place. He’s the one compelling the Church to become a cult and murder so many innocents! He’s the one you should be fighting! He is the one stirring man’s darkest impulses and turning the world into a hellscape!”

“No, Sebastian, you pathetic naïve fool.” Neferiti felt herself bristle with anger. She had heard enough. “The world of men is only behaving as it has done since time immemorial. The hysteria caused by the arrival so-called one true dragon god is but a turn of the seasons. I will change that. If Felgast truly has a hand in the will of the Church, it will be to the world’s benefit. And any magical user like your elven friends, or your dwarven runesmiths, fool enough to get in his way instead of joining him, will only pay the price.”

Sebastian’s entire composure appeared to weaken as if struck by a blow, but his sword-arm readied, its blade pointing up at her like a challenge.

“Under him, this world will suffer.”

Neferiti called the power of the Riven into her hands. Purple, crackling lightning rippled and crackled to life, its tendrils curling up her fingertips, her nails acting as conductors. Her eyes glowed with electric warmth, the air filled with ozone of pure dark energy.

“Under him, I will thrive.”

“No!” Sebastian roared and charged, his pauldrons and greaves rustling and scraping as he ran, the coat-tails of his tabard flowing behind him between his legs. He rose his sword, a hand-and-a hald double edged straight sword high above his head, but led with his shield arm in front, the golden dragon rippling with light as it rushed towards her.

Neferiti side-stepped with a casual grace, spinning away to his right and fired one single shot of lightning magic, her fingers each conducting a bolt that joined together into one crackling missile. Sebastian’s armour was lighter than she expected, however, as he skidded to a halt quickly enough to raise his shield to protect his vulnerable side. It mattered little. The bolt struck the left side of his targe, slamming it into him hard enough to propel him off his feet and onto the ground, sliding across the ground.

Of course. The power of his church’s infernally blessed waters preventing her bolts from cooking him alive. For his desire to talk, he was wise enough to prepare for a fight.

Sebastian groaned, and frantically spun onto his right side, keeping his shield up as he awkwardly ambled to his feet. And he came again, this time swinging with his sword while shielding his approach with his sword.

Neferiti dodged, sidestepping to her left and ducking her head back, feeling the blessed steel sword cut only air where she stood. His returning swing cut low to her exposed belly and she twisted out of its reach. His thrust was too easy to predict, which would be a ruse for his shield to strike her chest and knock her on her back.

Neferiti swatted away Sebastian’s longsword that was angled too low to do any harm with her left hand, struck hard with her right hand hard enough to lay Sebastian wide open and struck with a Riven Pulse, its ray of light electric cerulean blue in the middle of his surcoat that bore the image of a snarling wolf, biting a horned wyrm in the throat. The impact made him wince, knocking the air out of him as he fell backward. He used the momentum and distance to roll backwards, staggering awkwardly as he found his feet.

Sebastian faced her now, his thick black hair already tussled, and his brown eyes wide and wary. He sidestepped to his right, keeping his shield up, likely knowing that it was the only boon against the full might of her lightning spells and other curses.

_So he has learned his lessons from our last few battles. Commendable._

Neferiti matched him, step for step, stalking at him and peering into his defiant eyes with the strength of her wolfish, violet own. At an impulse, lightning crackled and trailed down the lengths of her fingertips. If half of any engagement was won by appearance alone, be they in ceremony or battle, then Neferiti would do her damndest to win her battle against the fool prince in will alone.

And she already knew that he would be found wanting when daring to match her in strength.

She fired with her right hand, and Sebastian ran, smacking aside the bolt into the air, the shield’s blessed metals absorbing and then re-directing it, sending it shooting away to score harmlessly into the black polished stone behind her. Another bolt from her left encouraged him to swing to his right, deflecting the bolt to burn into the stone floor by his legs by a mere metre. Sebastian growled and opened his guard as he closed the gap, swinging low with his sword and aiming for her mid-section.

Finally some teeth.

Neferiti bent backwards, allowing her necro-mantic magic to increase the very strength in her leg muscles to keep her rooted as she bent backwards on her knees, allowing the blade to pass a mere whisker above her silk covered chest. Sebastian gasped and tried to halt himself, but Neferiti had already recovered and stood at her full height. Sebastian tried to make her give ground with another desperate backhanded swing of his sword, then swung with his shield, hoping to catch her head with the bottom rim of his triangular shield.

Neferiti danced safely out of his reach and then lunged fast and low, breaking his guard that he had recklessly exposed with his shield and raking her nails across his lower back. She felt them bite through cloth and mail and into his flesh. Sebastian’s loud cry of surprise and hiss of pain that followed afterwards brought a savage grin to her lips like a feral beast that had just tasted blood.

Enough games.

As Sebastian stumbled forward, trying to recover, his neck and cheek muscles tensed as he bit back a curse and a scream from his lips, Neferiti twitched the fingers of her left hand and conjured her lightning whip, tendrils of glowing energy capable of gripping onto any surface and cutting into the armour or skin of any creature alive. Sebastian turned and lifted his shield, gritting his teeth as he attempted to defend himself.

In truth, Neferiti knew she could kill him with the strongest of dark magic she could muster, but she wanted to break him. Humble him. Cripple him and humiliate him for his immense and bumbling failures. Perhaps, once he was broken, he may prove to be of some use to her, or her fellow members of the Council of Dread Lords, serving the Dark Dragon.

But first he will break.

Neferiti swung with her left hand and the tendrils whipped forth, biting through the air with a lethal cracking noise. Each of the tendrils was her finger lengthened, her will extended, and each one latched onto the corners and edges of Sebastian’s shield. Sebastian’s eye’s widened as his left arm was suddenly tasked with the additional task of preventing his heavy shield from being wrenched from his grasp. He gave a loud yell as he dug his feet into the ground, tensing his knees. Neferiti pulled and Sebastian’s boots scraped against the black marble floor as they found no traction. Sebastian pulled against her tendrils with all the strength his impressive yet mortal arm, unbolstered by magics could allow.

Neferiti snarled and pulled to her left. Sebastian tried to fight her grip with all the strength he could muster, but his boots betrayed him, causing him to dig his heels against the floor to little avail.

Neferiti then wrenched her tendrils the other way, and Sebastian cried out as the pull ripped his arm in the opposite direction. The strap that held the shield to his forearm ripped free, and his hand holding the second strap let go, scraping hard against the armour protecting his arm. Neferiti used the momentum, swinging it through the air behind her head and bore down at Sebastian’s right side. Sebastian saw the incoming blow and raised the flat of his sword up barely time.

The shield smashed his sword against his own body and face, and Sebastian was sent sprawling to the floor. Neferiti let go of the shield, letting it clatter to the floor several feet away. For a moment he was still, laid out on his left side, and Neferiti wondered if she had rendered him unconscious, before he stirred and with a trembling arms, tried to push himself up.

Neferiti strode towards him, not giving him a chance to recover, seeing his hand try to reach for his sword. She was by his side in an instant, and with her right foot, cracked the prince’s chin with a sharp kick, sending him spinning to his right, his sword forgotten. The prince moaned sharply in pain, and Neferiti brought her claws up to bear. By the time Sebastian opened his eyes, she was descending down on him, reaching with her lengthened nails towards his eyes and face.

Pinning him to the ground with her weight and his body between her legs, the move might have seemed intimate if she was not trying to gouge his eyes and rip into his face with her claws. She didn’t descend fast enough however. Sebastians’s left gauntlet found his sword and he brought the blade up, gripping the blade with his right hand and using it as a flimsy shield. Neferiti’s hands met, her right above her left as she thrust down with murderous intent, and his sword caught her hands, her nails now inches away from his face and neck.

Sebastian grunted with effort and Neferiti bore down on him with all her strength and weight. She was not built as a warrior, but her magic served well enough to match Sebastian’s threws and press him hard, as she pushed down onto his face with her outstretched claws. She could see the welt from where his shield, or perhaps his sword, struck his face and leaving a dark welt at his temple. His lip was cut and bleeding at the left corner.

This fight was done.

“Make no mistake, my prince.” She hissed venomously with gritted teeth. “I will kill you. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but once I break you, you will be mine or my lord’s to do with as we please!”

Sebastian’s eyes widened, as if the danger of this fight had only now just dawned on him, and then his brow furrowed, and his teeth, tinged with blood, flashed as he began to push against her claws. Neferiti growled and bore down harder. His resistance fell a little, enough for the tip of one of her claws to mark his right cheek.

And then he pushed, gripping hard both blade and handle, heedless of the blood beginning to drip down from his right gauntlet. With his core and strength of his arms, strength in them still, he pushed up with all the effort his upper body could summon.

Neferiti felt surprise, an ugly and hateful sensation arise in her.

_No…how?! How dare he try to resist me!_

Sebastian then twisted and threw his sword, and Neferiti was thrown to her left side, rolling from the force. Sebastian twisted away as she recovered, clawing into the ground and clambering onto her feet, feeling her skirt split by its natural seams to allow her to recover in a crouching position like a grey panther ready to lunge at him again.

He was going for his shield, and Neferiti mentally berated herself for leaving the shield too close for him to reach it. She sprang towards him from her position as he frantically slid across the ground towards his targe.

She was seconds too late. Sebastian had clutched the farthest grip of his shield, rose to his knees and brought it up to bear. His knelt position helped him absorb Neferiti’s lunge, her claws scraping helplessly against the painted wood in the centre of his shield. Neferiti hissed with frustration as she hit the ground, her nails and knees scraping against the stone. Recovering, she lashed out with her claws at his right side, only for Sebastian to smash her hand away. At this range, she was vulnerable to being run through his sword, which had stayed in his hand the entire time, but instead she was greeted with the golden crest of the dragon, with black lines raked across its neck and head, slamming into her face, hard. She lifted her right arm and pushed away from it, but her own strength worked against her, and she was smashed backwards, her own knuckles striking her in the mouth.

Neferiti’s teeth cut into her lip, and a white light flashed before her eyes. She felt herself soar backward through the air and then sharp, burning pain as the back of her head hit what she realised was a pillar. Her head stung, and she fought the rising nausea in her mouth and head with as much will as she could muster, but her world still swayed. Now she was bleeding.

Her eyes blinked open, and Sebastian’s slowly rising form swayed and split before her eyes in the gloom of the temple illuminated only by the temple’s singular hole in its ceiling. She leant, no, slumped against the pillar she had been thrown against. He must have pushed against her with his legs to hit her that hard, and the way his legs staggered confirmed that theory.

So like her, he too was holding his strength back. But not for the reason she had.

She felt her blood trickle down the left side of her cheek, and the back of her head stung like the worst of a wine hangover. Her mouth opened as she panted raggedly from her exertion. Fortunately for her, Sebastian was recovering as well.

But she had made a mistake. She saw that now. In holding herself back, she had provided him with too many opportunities to kill her, leaving herself open and trying to engage him on equal ground.

So be it. Risking killing him would be worth the reward of showing him defeated before his allies and forces.

And him holding himself back would be his undoing.

“S-stand down, Nef!” Her adversary prince spoke, swaying unsteadily on his feet, but still armed, and still rising again to bear his weapons against her. “I do not want to kill you!”

Nef pushed herself from the wall, her talons scraping against the black stone. She tasted coppery metal in her teeth, mixing with her saliva down the left corner of her lips. She lifted her left hand, wiping the top of it across her lips. She looked down at it, fixing it with her gaze as it returned to sharp, crystal clear focus. The blood on her hand glinted as dark and stickly as the shadows of the obsidian temple.

And Neferiti glared up at Sebastian’s eyes, meeting them with all the darkness, hatred and fury of a woken dragon, her own hellish fury brought to bear as her soul called forth the dark sorcery in her blood, and violet lightning coursed up her arms and rippled from her eyes across her face.

“That’s why you are going to lose.”

And with that final note, assuring her clear total victory, she launched herself from her feet again at him with a raw, bestial scream. Thunder broke and lightning spat and roared around her as she lunged towards the prince, him raising his shield and sword arm ready as she thrust her left arm back, gathering all her power to let fly all her terrible power as the Sorceress Queen upon the hapless prince’s shield…

***

_Sing, ye muses_

_Let the Volva sway and moan in trance_

_Let the sibyls crone and wail to the waft of incense_

_Let the hem-netjer drone to the chiming gong_

_Sing ye all, of the story of dark and terrible Neferiti_

_And of her fabled love for the prince and fool, Sebastian brave_

_Sing of their love, light and dark in twisted, burning, fiery union_

_Seized in passion and bonded by seals unbreakable._

_Her pull of him in siren song sweet as honeyed sin._

_His love for her a balm embalmment of her hateful lusts and wicked vices_

_Blessings and curses followed their fate._

_Hand in hand they strode in sin and light._

_Braving the cruelty of vain men and_

_machinations of mad devils_

_Tempestuous_

_Runs the storms of lust_

_Yet in such binds will such a union hold true and outlast_

_The world of gods and men?_

_Thieves in fortune and thieves in poverty_

_Mortals who gamble with the plans of gods and demons and spirits and djinn as cheaply as chess pieces_

_Gladiators who pit their thews gainst the immovable might of titans_

_The hand of fates most dark and cruel_

_The vain plucking arms of mighty kings and lords with petty minds and the hearts of children_

_The whisperers of serpentine plotters_

_And lusting aspirants blind to their humble blood_

_The vices of poor men boastful in virtue and base and proud in their wealth_

_The vain entitlements of the rich in their towers of privilege and wealth_

_The wills of ancient, wild, ethereal kingdoms of lustrous shining wonder_

_And realms of such mystery and immortal deific might_

_And the plots of great powers who would waylay or slay them still._

_Sing, ye muses, ye volvas, ye sibyls, ye hem-netjer,_

_All sages, monks and wise folk all_

_Of the battle against darkness external_

_That our lady of dark and our man of light are into their bondage thrust_

_Chained by fate to clash and collide_

_And battle against their fates decreed_

_And to undo the deeds of denizens dark and vile_

_She of aspen coil, her scales wreathed in storm_

_And he of wolven heart, resolved and loyal beyond reason_

_Daring even in his princely heritage_

_To climb upwards in_

_The wantonness of poor men_

_Daring to look up_

_At the luscious jewels_

_Of heavens rolling falls_

_Sing ye muses, ye speakers of doom_

_Sing of the one who in his bloodlust and wrath_

_Seeks to break the world tree and_

_Burn and bite and rend bloody the roots of realty_

_Sing of he of terrible black wings_

_And the white fanged jaws of the dark_

_Sing of he who would bring this world’s final doom._

_Sing of he who brings the hellish flame and the murky end and the hungering dark_

_The death of all who live, and the stiller of the hearts of gods._

_Sing, ye prophets, ye chroniclers, ye weavers of the ghastly loom, rumours of the incalculable will of the stars,_

_And bring us all the tales of the fall of Athiral, and the rise of the Dark Dragon._


	2. Skirmish on Gwynilaff Hill

With a soul-rattling screech, the imp lasher leapt through the air and pounced hard on Sebastian. If he hadn’t had his shield hefted and ready, and planted his feet, in spite of the slippery floor under his boots, he would’ve been bowled over and likely had his throat torn out.

Sebastian ducked his head, feeling the razor sharp claws scrape against his shield, grazing at his helmet, felt the hot frantic breath of the imp as it tried to bite into his skull. He managed to keep his footing, planted his feet and pushed with his might, strength and steel serving him well today. The lasher’s clawed feet found not traction on the wet earth, and it yielded. Far enough for his shield to create an opening. The dark grey imp’s lean, narrow torso, more scale and stickly bone than flesh, puffed its thin belly at him.

Sebastian poised his longsword and thrust hard. The blessed steel, soaked in the waters blessed by a priest of his church and prayed over by his father and sharpened for over a week, slid into the demon’s belly with purpose and righteous burning fury. A sickening metallic crunch into the carapace-like flesh resounded in his ears. The imp howled pitifully, and Sebastian smashed his grey shield into the beast, sending it flying back. It fell hard, bouncing once on the broken earth toiled by feet and blade, its fanged angular jaws twitched once, before its orange eyes like glowing embers flickered and fell dark.

Another came at him from the melee of bodies, iron dressed and carapace surging against one another, limbs and feet and claws flying and whipping and ripped and severed in the storm of sword and blood. Sebastian side-stepped it to its right, sweeping low with his sword. He felt the bite and crunch as his blade parted its knees from its legs, and as it fell forward, his parting slash cut through the side of its neck, black blood spurting from its severed flesh.

The roar of battle was a ceaseless, unending din. It threatened to consume him, overwhelm him with its phantasm, reeking of blood and sulphur and fear and rage. Sebastian had to watch his footing to avoid the bodies of demons and his own men, broken and strewn across the bloodied grass. Gwynilaff’s hill would be soaked in the blood of man and fiend for years to come after this day.

One more lunged from a crouched position, claws out-stretched in a pouncing manuever. Sebastian reacted, the rim of his shield flying forward to smack it from the air. Sebastian recovered quickly enough to raise his sword and bury it hard through the fiend’s left shoulder as it rose up, cleaving into its chest, before wrenching it free with a boot to its body.

Sebastian had to get to higher ground. He had to find Father, now!

Sebastian saw the rise, just as a lasher pounced on a fleeing soldier, his wide-rimmed open-faced helmet tumbled from his head as he and the fiend fell onto the dirt.

“Aah! Help- no- no!” The young man with rugged short blonde hair, caked in mud, was screaming, as the fiend lowered its wide, salivating jaws to his neck.

Sebastian lunged forward, roaring to get the fiend’s attention. It looked, its glowing, pupiless orange eyes burning bright and its mouth gaping open, teeth red from being sheathed in blood already. With one swing, Sebastian’s broadsword cut the beast’s head clean from his neck. Kicking the body away, Sebastian dropped his shield, the straps sliding down his wrist and gloved hand. He grabbed the man and turned him over.

He was young, looking no older than sixteen, barely a stripling entering into manhood. His grey eyes were wild and his mouth was parted and panting. He was skinny, the flesh clinging to the bones on his face, cheekbones prominent under his wild eyes. Sebastian hooked the pommel of his sword under the lad’s right armpit, and with his left hand he clutched the other, and pulled the boy away from the hill, before shifting to stand alongside him and pull him up.

“Easy! Are you hurt!”

“S-sir -” The boy stammered, his thick sleeved arm heavy on Sebastian’s armoured gauntlet. “My sergeant- th-they got ‘im and m-m-my pike broke and- and they- they-”

The boy was moments away from descending into a hollering, screaming mess. His burgundy coloured battle tunic, complimented with a sturdy plain breastplate, fell down to his thighs with an open area where his crotch was, protected by a metal cup. The dark stain running down the inner seam of his left leg and around the cup told Sebastian that he had soiled himself.

“Soldier!” Sebastian shook the man once, a gentle but firm jolt of his shoulder.

The lad stopped babbling, tears streaming down his red, soaked face as his wild eyes met his own.

“You did good today! Go to the back of the line, find one of the priests, and stay out of the fighting. You hear me?”

The boy only nodded, trembling, and Sebastian guided him towards the direction of the rear. Sebastian glanced around him, where thankfully the fighting was not as fierce behind him as it was in front of him.

“I need a man to see this boy to safety!”

A portly knight with a stained white surcoat sporting a golden dragon over his breastplate lumbered forward, his face obscured by his great helm. He carried a halberd stained with blood.

“I’ll take him, milord.” His muffled voice rumbled under his helm.

“Tobias.” Sebastian nodded, recognising him by his thick-bladed pole-ax, height and girth about his waste. “Get him to a priest and get back here, we need every man we can get!”

“Milord.” The knight tipped his helm before storming off after the boy, taking his shoulder with a rough grasp and disappearing into the throng of bodies. There was space enough for them to manoeuvre their way through, which was good. They were gaining ground.

_That boy was a pikeman and of my father’s men. Must have been at the front where the fighting was fiercest._

Sebastian turned and began again to clamber up to the hill, grabbing his shield and slinging it onto his arm. This time he pulled it further up his forearm, freeing his other hand to grab his sword handle under his right. And with that he advanced.

Another lasher to his left saw him and sprinted down towards him. Sebastian crouched, took the brunt of the blow while the demon’s other hand cut harmlessly through the air past his helm. He shunted it back and swept low, cutting the fiend in half at the waist. The second took a swipe at his head. Sebastian ducked and swung upward. The demon’s chest exploded in a flurry of bone and blood and fell away.

The third came from behind, latching onto his shoulders. Sebastian threw his helmed head back, feeling a jolt as the back of his helm cracked the lasher’s noseless face. The grip on his shoulders abated. Sebastian struck with the back of his shield, and for the imp’s cowardly attempt to bite out his throat from behind, he drove his sword down into the imp’s brains, carving the skull in two. The lasher had a thin skull with its ringed horns fused to the sides of its head in place for ears. A lesser beast trying to bring to him a lesser end. The skull parted too easily under the force, and Sebastian’s shield sent its body into the dirt.

Sebastian turned and strode up to the top of the rise.

The epicenter of the battlefield at the centre of Gwynilaff’s Hill lay before him. Taller, muscular bodies, bodies burnt to a crisp with veins of hellish magma and white horned heads waded through the sea of bodies that rose to their waists, swatting away with their iron clubs like fists of knotted steel at the spears and swords being jammed into them like little more than flies.

_Imp Brutes. Shit._

One of the men before him cut down a demon before turning to see him. His eyes widened in recognition and his black bearded mouth gaped before it spoke.

“Prince Sebastian- Prince Sebastian is here! By God, its him! He’s come to help us!”

Sebastian knew that his own flat-topped open-faced helm, which left his eyes and mouth exposed with a small strip of metal to protect his nose, was a risk to arrows and all other foulness on the battlefield, but with its small feathered wings and the forged roaring face of the lion on its brow, it was easily recognisable as the prince’s helm. His helm. He wanted the men to know it was him coming to help.

“Stay strong, soldier! God is on our side!” Sebastian spoke with a clear, loud voice, loud enough for others to turn and see him. More faces, weary, cut, shaven and bare as a babes, bleeding and bruised, turned to greet him with wild, dull unrecognising eyes, before they lit up and turned to one another, open helms and great helms nodding and stirring with excitement.

Sebastian smiled grimly. His chest felt like divine, soothing fire of the angels had been poured into it. He turned to his brother’s in arms, the forces that he had brought with him mingled with the forces of his father.

“Pax Leonis is on our side! For Longland, and for King Rochlann!” He rose his sword in the sky.

“Arrows!” Someone roared, and Sebastian turned and crouched under his shield risen aloft. His arm shook with the thuds and scrapes of demon arrows hitting their mark and scoring against the thick wood of his shield. His stomach turned as he heard the arrows hitting their mark elsewhere, into the meat and mail of his men and the men he had come to help. He grit his teeth, rage at the monsters daring to assault the kings land with their foul sorcery and their bestial fury.

He stood and severed the stems of the arrows prickling his shield. The cloudy sky was clear of arrows for now.

Just beyond the field, he saw a great rocky outcrop, upon which a shadowy, cloaked figure holding a what appeared to be a staff with a distinctly glowing red jewel atop it surveyed the field. He was flanked by four taller, muscular demons, their faces and bodies covered in black iron plate save for their distinct ringed horns.

_The demon’s leader. A priest by the look of him, and his honour guard!_

In the field, he saw a shimmer of gold, from which a cloak of white flowed, and a shimmer of silver waved in and out of the crowd of demons thronging around it. Surrounded by men in great helms jabbing and swiping with remorseless fury at the other demons trying to get past them with their halberds and their swords.

_Father…_

He pointed at the white cloak with his sword.

“To the King! Clear a path to the king!”

And the men in front roared and echoed his battle cry, and went to their bloody work with renewed vigor with axe and hammer and blade, and the footsteps behind and around him told Sebastian that the men were teeming over the hill behind him and flanking him.

He ran down, stepping over the bodies. He felt his armour rustle and scrape as he did, and the sweat built under his armpits and legs, but by God if this was not the most heroic and bravest he had ever felt in so long. If only Ilyia was here to see him. She would be so impressed…

Sebastian’s path remained clear, as the fighting men under his kingdom’s rule, renewed by the sight of him, fought and cut and died and threw themselves against the throng of demons trying to overwhelm them. Some got through, clambering towards him, missing perhaps an arm or part of their warped skulls, and Sebastian ended them with strokes of his sword.

“The king! Get me to the king!”

They continued on, cutting their swathe as fiercely as iron and steel could serve them against the snapping, baleful jaws and claws of hell itself. Using his shield, Sebastian sent a lasher leaping at him over his head, his shoulders momentarily straining against its weight, leaving it floundering on the ground behind him to be finished off by the men behind him. He dealt cuts both lethal and glancing as he forged on, the line of men in front of him growing thinner the fiercer the fighting got. The closer he got to Father, the more savage and relentless the blows, clubs and pounces of the imps grew, weathering his men into nothing under their furious storm.

And then there was nothing between him and the line of dark, scaled and spiny covered monstrosities piling towards him. He made a note to remember to honour all the men who died protecting him in his reckless charge today.

“For God and Glory!” Sebastian roared, bracing himself as a brace of armoured imps, their features too obscured by their charred, rusting armour to fully identify them, rushed towards him with jagged spears, tridents and bidents. Sebastian ducked his head, swung his shield against the wall of spears thrust into him, and cut and batted away the tips of any that came at his body, and hacked into the heads and arms of all the demon pikemen he could reach.

Some got past his guard and arcing sword. Some blades glanced off his plates and chest. Some hit hard at his chest and back, and his legs and arms. He felt warmth and blotchy bruises form where his armour could not protect him. Sebastian spun, struck, deflected and slashed. He could feel his strength ebbing, but his rage unabated. This was a blight on Athiral, a stain on his homeland. He would hack them all down for their invasions, their attacks on nature, their hunts that dragged women and children into the night, deep underground into their lairs. Creeping, hateful, warped, evil based scum!

“Raggh! Come on! Come on! I’ll kill you all! I’ll kill every last one of you demon scum!”

He kicked one imp’s leg so hard its knee cracked and burst in twain. Another thrust at him. Its point cut into Sebastian’s right side when he failed to dodge in time, and Sebastian’s wroth awoke. With his sword held high, heedless of any danger doing so would bring, Sebastian swung down and cut into the demon’s left shoulder. Its fiery eyes under its crudely forged helm widened as the blade came down and cut through, ripping into its chest and carving out its right side. The demon fell in two pieces.

A footsoldier imp came at him with its claws holding a hideous mace with curved points on its head. Sebastian’s swing severed its hands clean from its arms and opened its throat in one slash. One carrying a falchion like blade fell away with the top right of its horned skull missing. A trident wielding fiend thrust, missed and received a crack across the chin from Sebastian’s shield so hard that it span its helm covered head around, snapping its neck. 

Sebastian saw movement, an foot solider’s clawed leg stepping into the bottom left corner of his vision, and he reacted, lifting his shield high. The notched face of a hammer crested the top of his shield, and Sebastian shunted it away, before bringing the bottom tip of his shield onto the imp’s right knee with a loud wet crunch. Sebastian spun towards the imp’s head as it threw its head back to howl, exposing its scaly neck and spike covered chin, and drove his sword up.

The tip of his sword burst out of the top of the horned imp’s skull, cutting off its howl into a gurgling rattle. Sebastian watched the demon’s eyes flicker into nothing, before shoving it away and ripping his sword free with a metallic rasp. The hammer wielding imp fell twitching to the floor, and Sebastian readied himself for another assault.

None of the throng around him approached, the chattering armoured and unarmoured imps hesitantly stepping back and squawking at each other, goading each other to try and take a piece of the prince.

Sebastian lifted his shield, saw the metallic, mirror-like corner of the upper right part, its metalwork glistening with a sliver of blood. He saw a dark blur in its crude frame, and heard the footsteps.

Sebastian gasped, and in his reflex, spun his sword in his grasp and thrust behind him. His sword met a moment of resistance, before sliding into the body of the being behind him with a meaty, tearing sound. A hideous, raspy sound rattled through the air, too close for Sebastian to like. He felt the body of his would-be-assassin slump against his sword, leaning into his back. He pivoted forward, pulled his sword free and kicked it away with his right boot, before spinning his sword back into his normal grip.

_Thank Mother for the mirror. Thank Davyth for the training._

The throng of demons quailed at the sight, and Sebastian risked a glance around to make sure none of the others wanted to copy their unfortunate comrade. He grit his teeth again, raising his shield, ambling around to guard against any arrows or spears to be thrown at him, his eyes darting around.

Eyes open! Need to keep moving.

But no spear or arrow came. No foul bomb or concoction sailed through the air to try and burn away his armour.

"Anyone! Try me! Come on!" He roared from under his helm, rapping his sword against his shield, keeping his posture strong, his knees soft and ready to bring into action.

Then the ground rumbled briefly under his feet. The blood-soaked uncut grass, muddy and shredded by feet and blades and bodies, seemed to tremble under his feet. Then it came, a loud throaty rumbling bellow resounding above the din of battle. Turning to his right to keep himself facing the new threat, Sebastian swallowed down the urge to quail as a twenty foot tall imp brute lumbered from the crowd. Its skin was the colour of burnt dirt, brown and black as charcoal in places, mottled with thin veins and lesions of orange webbing across its fat, muscular body.

Its chest was covered in a sheet of flat iron metal, with additional slabs of iron on the top of its legs and arms. The beast was more like a hairless minotaur or a troll than an imp. Its only defining features that made it an imp spawn were its curled ram horns on the sides of its squat, square profiled head with thick plated teeth, shards of bone in place of teeth, and the hoof like appendages on which its bowed, digitigrade legs sat. In spite of its body, its face and head was an skull-like white, as it had dipped its burnt head in chalk, and a hideous pale face atop a thick, bulging neck stared down at him with small, porcine like eyes.

It carried an iron club, all too well like the others, dragging it behind its lumbering, fat body on one arm.

“Torr nu sheve dar Astalloth, Pincey, nar tra jurr brokkaaa!!!” The brute roared at him in its guttural tongue, its forked fat tongue flickering in its bloody maw. With their height and nightmarish prowess in strength, Imp Brutes were tough opponents and giants in their own right.

But not un-killable.

Lifting its club to the fore, the brute lifted it high above its head and swung down towards him. Sebastian leapt to the side, as far and as quickly as the surge of adrenaline blooming in his chest to beat down his fear bade him to do. The club hammered into the earth and the broken bodies and the one crawling imp with the broken knee, toiling the earth under it into a crater of pulped blood and bone and dirt.

Sebastian ran forward, urging his legs to pull him along as quickly as they could carry him in his armour. The brute snarled and tried to sweep him off its feet by swinging it to his right, but Sebastian was already inside its arm’s range. The brute stank of shit, blood, sulphur, metallic, rank and gore stained, as Sebastian closed the gap and thrust his sword up into the chin of the slavering beast. He was trying to score a cut in the front of its neck, sever its windpipe if he was lucky. Instead he scored a nick on its chin, and it's head reared up in pain.

Sebastian panicked, and tried to back away, but the brute lowed in fury and brought its left hand up. Luckily it did not make to grab him, but it swept its free hand down towards him. Sebastian threw up his shield and continued to hurry backwards, his hot breath fogging the mirror corner of his shield. Too late. The back of the brute’s hand, covered by a loose flap of iron, slammed into his shield and face. Light danced across Sebastian’s vision as he was swatted away.

His head and chin throbbed with pain. He didn’t remember hitting the ground, but when he opened his eyes and sense returned to him, there was blood in his mouth and he was lying face down on the muddy earth. His limbs were slow to respond as he tried to right himself, as sluggish as if he were drunk. He pushed and twisted upwards, planting one unsteady foot and staggering to his feet. He struck his sword into the earth to act as a cane for him to lean on.

The strap on his helm was broken, ripped from when the brute’s blow nearly wrenched it off. Sebastian lifted his arms, freeing the fingers from the strap of his shield and grasped his helm. With a careful pull, the helm slid off, and his hair tumbled free from the back as the metallic, sweat stinking helm, padded on its interior to cushion his head from the harsh interior, now stood in its hands. The left small wing, as if a counter to the demon’s horns, was broken, snapped off from the hit. The lion’s head was cracked.

“Such a good helmet…” He mourned over it almost numbly. His own voice sounded as if he was hearing someone from underwater. Another muffled thud sounded nearby. Sebastian looked up to his left at the source.

The brute grimaced down at him, readying its club for another swing. With a deliberate, malicious grin on its hideous face and cracked shards for teeth, the beast lifted its cruel weapon.

Sebastian breathed in, steadying himself, eyeing the immense demon before him. His fingers dug into his helm. The brute’s small, pig-like orange gems narrowed at him, and its nose holes widened as it snorted at him.

_Ugly bastard._

The world’s fuzziness melted away into alarmingly bright and loud clarity. The wind of the cold day and the stink of death hit his bearded and moustached face. The battle still raged nearby, and Sebastian was only spared from the worst of its carnage because the enemy was too afraid to come one more step towards him, sending one of their biggest and hardest men to deal with him.

The brute roared and began to swing downward. Sebastian was facing the beast by his left side, a perfect angle for him. He swept his left leg to the side, leaned back and hurled his right arm holding his helm forward. The heavy, crude missile flew through the air and bounced off the brute’s face with a definitive _kong_ sound.

The brute’s eyes screwed shut, and it bellowed, reaching its hand to its stinging face while lumbering forward and swinging its club in a low arc towards him. Sebastian reached behind him, freed his sword from the earth and tumbled to his left across on the ground, his armoured body pressing against the corpses of the imps like a rolling pin. The club swung through the air, and once again Sebastian found himself running inside the brute’s reach. It’s arm was the span of two grown men, and Sebastian panted hard as he sprinted towards the brute’s right leg.

With a toss of his left arm, his shield flew free from his arm, and gripping his sword with both hands, its length a hand-and-a half for balanced and versatile use in the field, he lifted it as he neared the beast’s ankle and swung into the calf, as far above the cloven hoof of the monster as he could manage.

The blade hit home, biting into the rigid muscle through to the bone. The brute howled, and before it could kick him away like a mule, Sebastian was pulling, dragging the keen edge of the blessed blade through the limb, shredding the tendon in twain. The brute’s howl rose to a shrill bellow of agony, and it stumbled forward, falling hard onto its own elbows as it roared its agony into the dirt. Its rear end, covered only by an iron flap covered loin-cloth, stank to high heaven of rank goat shit and burnt Its back was armoured, covered with crocodilian scutes and boulder-like crevices in its hard, troll-like back.

_Perfect._

Sebastian went to the side of its leg and leapt onto the back of its leg, pulling himself up, trying hard not to inhale the stinking brute’s rear, before leaping up at the upper thigh. His hand gripped the edge of its back plate, and his sword thrust home into the soft underside of its quads. The brute writhed in agony, and Sebastian moved before it could try to shake him off, leaping up onto the rope-like cord that held its loin-cloth to its waist, and pulling himself up, scrambling with his legs and his other hand still gripping his sword. His feet found purchase and his gloved hand found a scute small enough for him to get a good grip.

He pulled himself up, and with the point of his sword anchored into the beast’s back. The brute howled, lumbering to its feet. Sebastian held on for dear life, willing every muscle to not fail him and keep him clung to the demon’s back. The shaking seemed to be unending, and the air rushed through Sebastian’s black hair like a storm, but he held on, digging his sword deeper into the chink he had miraculously found.

The writhing stopped, and Sebastian did not squander the opportunity. He pulled himself up by his aching arm, ripped his blade free and then thrust it into the beast’s back. It could only sink into the tip and an inch more, but it was enough. The demon’s burly arms like pillar’s of rippling charcoal flesh reared up and beat its shoulders, and Sebastian was reminded that even if the beast couldn’t rip him off with its hands, it would soon treat him like how a bear treated a flea and would soon roll on the ground, crushing him under its immense weight.

Sebastian reached up, grabbed a scute and wrenched his sword free, before driving it like a pick into the beast’s back. This time the sword bit deeper and as the creature bowed its head, Sebastian realised he was near the neck, and one of its weak spots. The brute’s back was armoured only where it could not afford to move or be flexible, and with that reminder in his mind, Sebastian pulled himself, swaying and clinging on the scute, sharp and long and not as blunt as the ones on its lower back. It acted as the perfect grip as the demon began to sway, and Sebastian was nearly thrown off twice, his hair sticking to his face and about his eyes.

With one toss, he shook his hair free, aimed the point of his sword at the back of the brute’s skull, just when he began to feel his glove begin to slip from the spike, and thrust hard.

There was a horrifying moment of resistance, and Sebastian feared he had poorly aimed his sword, but the tip struck, and Sebastian chose to commit to it fully. He leaned in and thrust forward with as much strength as he could muster. The blade strove forward, the brute’s howls rose to a greater, more unbearable pitch. Orange, frothing blood mingled with red spurted from the wound.

Then his sword slid through the gap and punched cleanly through the back of the brute’s neck and out through its mouth.

The brute froze, becoming stock still and stock still. Its howls immediately subsided to a long, drawn-out rattling choked gasp. Then its arms fell loosely to its side, and its ponderous head began to weigh on Sebastian’s arm.

 _A strange sight indeed._ Sebastian though grimly to himself. _Like the angels of scripture, it now has a sword for a tongue._

Sebastian gladly retrieved his sword, and braced, as the brute swayed on its hoof and crippled leg, before it began to fall forward. But then began to topple backward.

Sebastian blanched. He was prepared to simply roll forward off the demon’s head using the momentum of its fall. Checking behind him, Sebastian waited until the demon’s head began to reach its tipping point, then leapt, pushing himself off. He neared the ground in one full second and rolled on impact, painfully and earning his body more bruises. The ground rumbled as the brute struck the ground dead right behind him.

His world tipped and turned, and he managed to keep a hold of his sword, striking it into the dirt to aid the slowing of his fault. The sword held, and Sebastian listed against the sword, floundering on his back, before pulling himself upright on his right knee.

He gasped, and panted. Now would be a good time for an imp to sneak up on him. The rustle of armoured plates made him look up.

Before him was a tall, proud looking knight, armoured head to toe in silver, polished armour like an angel wielding a longsword with a silver encrusted pommel and crossbar. He looked down at him from his downward pointing triangular slot that served for his eye-holes, his helmet ornately designed with three curved fins across the top of his helm, and he turned to someone behind him.

“Your Highness, the prince is here!” He spoke with a deep, echoing voice resounding from behind his visor.

Sebastian gasped, too exhausted to stand.

 _Might as well kneel._ He joked towards himself, his soul giddy with excitement at having bested a mighty warrior and his father about to find out, because he had come here to save him. A smile came to his face, heedless of the men fighting and dying around him.

The honour guard stepped aside, and stepping forward in his golden suit of armour, his white cloak rippling behind him, with a crown forged into his open helm that protected the sides and back of his head and left his bearded face uncovered, with crow’s eyes around his brown eyes and fine brown-black hair creeping from under his helm despite his years, armed with a bloody claymore broadsword in his right hand, King Rochlann of Longland and the United Realms of Cymland, Faerland, and Lochland looked down at him with a mixed expression of affection-laden surprise and incredulous horrified shock.

“Hello, Father.” Sebastian managed to pant out.

Rochlann, Father, blinked only once, his expression never leaving his face, before replying in an even measured tone of his proud, reassuring voice.

“Son.”


	3. A Deal and a Duel

Father had been visible to Sebastian as well as his royal guard because, as Sebastian now saw, they placed themselves on a small raised mound of earth, visible enough for all to see. Risky for archers and other foulness, but the towering shields, held by the royal guard, were strong enough to repel any weaponry or spell that the demons sought to cast.

The men’s fighting would no doubt be the fiercest surrounding the mound on which Father stood, yet judging by the bodies surrounding them, they had nearly all but fallen. If Sebastian had not arrived and distracted the horde while he did, that brute summoned to kill him would have tried to crush Father instead…

Father looked behind Sebastian, over the score of lasher and footsoldier bodies and the open-mouthed corpse of the brute behind him.

“I see that you have been busy.” He stated with a matter-of-factly tone.

Sebastian maintained his relaxed mien, suppressing a desire to internally wince. When Father was angry, he rarely showed it, at first anyway. Father was a man who preferred to assess the situation before making his judgement and showing his displeasure, unlike Mother, whose veikingr red-headed blood made her more direct when it came to matters that irritated her or aroused her ire.

Sebastian glanced back behind him. The company he had brought with him had now fully crested the rise over the hill he had charged down, and the standard of the golden dragon was held aloft by the two bearers, once enough armoured bodies had been put between them and the slavering, snapping demonic hordes. The company had remained in force and in bulk towards the rear, and had not been overrun, yet their presence had thinned the closer Sebastian’s eyes drew back to his own position.

He was foolish, reckless, and lucky, yet again, and his heart stung at the sight, followed by a stab of remorse to sour his moment of triumph. He had hoped to simply overwhelm the imp skirmishers with one heroic charge, having spared the horses including his own for the cavalry charge. Imp Brutes could easily sweep away crush horses with their clubs of mangled iron and rip them apart with their bare hands, and lashers did not discriminate between man and steed in their frenzied assaults.

A skirmish indeed was all this battle was, and Sebastian had planned, he believed accordingly. But the losses were still severe. The casualties would always be when fighting demons, but a reckless charge in that which his own life was risked…

The ranks of imps, footsoldiers and lashers both, remained wide and teeming between him and the company. Two lowing roars came from two magma-blooded brutes, that saw the men and began to lumber towards them, brandishing their clubs of varying width and menacing appearance.

“To the prince! To the king!” Sebastian saw one knight raise his hand. It was Stowold, his company’s Sergeant at Arms. “Archers, thin the ranks, kill the brutes!”

Then streaks of goose-feather flecked arrows sailed through the air from behind the rise, and landed with piercing, sudden into the mass of hooting, snarling demons. One brute lifted its huge rippling arm to shield its face, only to howl as arrows scored its blubbery flesh like porcupine quills.

“Pikemen, spears, to the front! Gut the bastards! Throwers, aim for their heads and neck!”

And from his side, a group of round-topped, breastplate sporting men in brown and grey thick jerkins rushed forward, shielded by the footmen, lesser protected but just as lethal fighters as their knight companions in their approach. Some of the pikemen and knights were swept away by the brutes, but by then it was too late. The pikemen thrust and the men skilled in throwing hurled their javelin spears through the air, punching into the trunk-like necks, chests and heads of the howling brutes. They fell to their knees, one following the other and the rest of the men found their courage and fell on them, hacking and stabbing with their spears, axes and swords.

The imp soldiers and lashers hissed and spat and clawed at the air between them at his men, and his father’s men, and soon began to withdraw, losing their courage in the face of their larger members being cut down.

“How many men did you bring in this folly of yours?” Father’s stern voice made Sebastian turn and look upwards.

“I…” Sebastian began to answer, but realised he was still kneeling. He stood shakily to his feet, the embers of adrenaline-fuelled battle lust beginning to die down in his chest. “A good portion. About a few…two companies worth…”

At Father’s narrowing, stare, his veil easily disintegrated, boyish shame compelling him to full honesty.

“Three companies, about 100 men at arms, including the archers and spearmen.”

Father nodded, his eyesbrows furrowed as he turned aside for a moment of thought. Sebastian knew he was clearly assuring himself that more than enough stayed at Rochlann Castle for Mother to use to defend against any invaders.

“So your mother is well protected still.” He nodded, the tension in his eyes lessening slightly in the lines of his forehead, before he turned back to face him. “And does she know of this temporary recruitment of a surplus group of men for a skirmish that I expressly forbade you from interfering with?”

Sebastian’s mind jolted him out of the brief stupor he had fallen into as he had done in expectation of another of his father’s lectures.

“Mother had a vision! She told me to come. The men are for my protection and to help yours. If I did not come then…”

“Then what? Why have you risked my bloodline and your own welfare to come to this quelling of Astalloth’s forces?” Father strode forward, and Sebastain was easily reminded of his superior height over him. Sebastian’s head stopped just under Father’s chin, and in spite of the differences in their build, with Father as a more leaner physique than Sebastian’s well-fed and more muscular build, he felt humble as always before his father, the king of Longland fair, and of his own life as prince. The smart remark as to the wisdom of Longland’s king risking his own life in direct battle instead of watching from afar on horseback stayed behind his lips. Instead he answered Father as plainly as he could.

“It was a dream. She spoke of only silver and-”

Sebastian saw movement behind Father’s right pauldron. One of the knights in silver had dropped his shield, keeping his sword in hand as it fell and tumbled forward. He turned, his face obscured by the identical visor with the thin downward sloping uni-eye hole shared by him and his other three brethren. His movement was frenzied, his white cloak sweeping upwards behind him, as his gauntlet searched, groped and drew-

“-A knife!”

Sebastian lunged forward, willing slackening muscle and his fatiguing lungs into action. He pressed his hand to Father’s right arm and pushed him aside, his sword sliding from the wet soil and in hand, ready to meet the knight’s own blade.

The royal guardsmen had thrust his sword as a precaution, likely to run Sebastian through his mail-protected neck while his other hand with the dagger buried its way into a vulnerable part of Father’s armour. Sebastian struck it away and seeing the dagger turn towards him, he deflected it and riposted with a thrust at the guard’s helm. The guard parried the blow with his sword and came at him with a low strike with his dagger.

_Ervik…the man’s name is Ervik_ , Sebastian remembered, as he rose his grip high and parried away the desperate blow. Ervik, one of the king’s royal guard in his mud-soaked and blood spattered, still magnificent, still regal and ornately forged suit of armour, circled to Sebastian’s left and fell on him with a manic, desperate fury.

Father was shouting at him, the guards too, and the nearby men, but Sebastian was too busy willing his aching muscles to push his blade faster, to twist his own body, weighed down by armour and battle fatigue in a desperate exchange of blows and parries, steel flashing as quick as lightning and scraping as violently as metal teeth grinding together. Trying to match a man nearly two inches taller and easily heavier than he was.

Ervik was yelling, roaring at the top of his lungs, his bellows muffled under his helm. Sebastian tried to glimpse the knight’s eyes under his visor but saw nothing but darkness, the man’s eyes shaded under the roof of his visor.

Sebastian’s left foot slipped on the mud and Ervik lunged towards his right side with the dagger. Sebastian twisted his blade, the flat side trapping the gauntlet above the hand. The dagger was close, trembling with all the strength the guard could muster in his off-hand. Sebastian reached out and caught the guard’s sword-arm, dancing to his right and recovering his footing in time to miss a fatal lunge. He met Ervik’s visor, mists of fog erupting from the pits in his face-plate and acted in the brief moment of respite he was given. Raising his head, he drove it forward and crashed his forehead hard against the dome of Eric’s helmet with a dull clanging sound. Ervik stumbled, and his strength faltered. Sebastian pushed hard with a roar, shoving away both of the knight’s arms.

The exchange came to an end as quickly as it began. Ervik flailed wildly with his sword, clearly more exhausted and having spent longer fighting than Sebastian had. Sebastian caught the blade with an upperward sweep and then twisted his blade to slam down hard on the gauntlet. Fingers likely broken, Ervik’s sword hand opened. The dagger came again. Sebastian yelled, low and guttural and swept his longsword up. This time the blade bit under the wide rim of the gauntlet, into the mail and shearing through the wrist of Ervik’s arm.

Ervik’s gauntlet still clutching the dagger span away from the silver truncated wrist that bore it, pale flesh and steel and a stump of gore and pale bone remaining from where the hand once stood. Ervik lifted his helm to howl in the air, his right plated gauntlet reaching to clutch into the wound as it spurted blood. Sebastian used the momentum of the strike, flowing with the movement to sidestep, lift his blade up high, righting his left hand grip at the pommel as he turned his sword skyward to aim his final blow.

With both his gauntlets gripping the sword handle, he swung down in a diagonal arc. Ervik’s mail-protected neck exploded in a brief deluge of blood and shattered tiny metal rings. Blood poured out and soaked deep into his mailed shirt. His hand and wrist fell limp, swaying by his sides, before his head lolled on its neck and with a heavy, metallic crash, Eric fell forward into the earth, his blood continuing to soak into the earth where he lay.

Sebastian panted. His left ankle twinged, making him believe he pulled something. In his mania, he glanced around, awaiting further treachery. The other three guards, Oskar, Emree and Jortan, stood still with their backs to him, their shields up to protect him and the king from arrows. None of them turned with their swords or daggers raised to descend on him or Father.

Father was yelling something. Ervik’s blood continued to soak into his mailed shirt under his breastplate, and pool and soak the muddy earth red.

“-astian! Sebastian! Son!”

“Arrows, sire!”

There was a flap of a heavy cloak, strong metal hands clasped his own pauldrons and pulled him down as the royal guard backed towards him and raised their shields, great towering walls of bronze-rimmed steel and oak. Sebastian was pulled face-down into the bloody dirt, and saw only the eyeless visor of Ervik staring back at him.

_His eyes…what in the Leon’s name happened to his eyes!_

Sebastian heard the repeated thumping sound of arrows striking into the earth and against the guard’s shield, and Father’s shield too, somewhere above him. He smelt the familiar old musky scent, mingled with that unbearable stink his shirt held after one of his morning runs, the smell bringing comfort, the familiar warmth in his heart. Father’s smell.

“Stay down, son, it’s alright, it’s alright…”

The deathly patter of arrows raining down on them ceased, the clatter of hellish barbs resounding about him like twigs bouncing off the guard’s shields.

“Clear, sire!” Oskar, distinguishable only by the fact that he was taller than Ervik and shorter than Jotun, yelled behind him, before he then said- “By Vodan, what the fuck happened to Ervik! Ervik!”

“He turned his blades on me. My son killed him.” Father’s stern voice rippled through him as he spoke.

“I… how…!”

“Keep up your shield, Oskar, remember your oath!” Jotun roared, and the scrape of metal and the turning of tall metal greaves and boots out of the corner of Sebastian’s sight told him that Oskar complied, hesitantly and haltingly in his shock.

Then the hands were pulling him, under his arms, and he was standing, swaying slightly, and his eyes met the concerned, heavy look of Father’s. They looked him over, his hands feeling briefly over his chest, checking to see if he was hurt. Once he was satisfied, a thin line of reproach scored his aged, bearded face.

“We could have questioned him.” He said, his proud voice marred by something that set it slightly off-key. Grief at Ervik’s betrayal?

Sebastian glanced down at the royal-guard body lying face down in the dirt, steam rising from his cooling wound in his neck. Something glinted from his belt, and Sebastian knew that for all the silver and steel the royal guard wore, not all of it protected the waist or was meant to spill from a leather, stringed pouch on his right side. He knelt and clutching it as ably as he could in the fingers of his gauntlet, he ripped the pouch’s cord tying it to his belt, and offered it to Father.

“His pouch has your answer.” He spat through gritted teeth. A member of the royal guard…his oath sold for silver, when he spent his entire career as a royal guard wearing it!

Father glanced at the pouch and accepted it from Sebastian, bouncing it in the palm of his golden plated gauntlet. Like a leathery egg, the stained brown pouch opened, its string loosened, and cradled within, silver as mint and clear as the guardsmen’s polished armour lay nestled within, almost alive with its own glow in the misty realm of the dead and the dying.

“So evil once again returns to my house.” Father spoke, in a sagely, grim voice that always captivated Sebastian in his moments of reverie.

“But easily cut out.” Sebastian assured him. “Mother warned me and I came to save you, to stop this from happening.”

_But who or what made Ervik turn traitor?_

“Who could have done this?” He asked, glancing at Ervik’s body. “Ervik…he was one of the most devout, the most loyal and he…”

Sebastian trailed off in his words, having to fight a rise of bile in his throat as his eyes stared at the dark slowly evaporating blood in the grass, seeping still from the neck of the man he just cut down.

“One suspect comes to mind.” Father spoke, his brow furrowing again and his jaw hardening with a regal, mighty determination in his eyes.

And throwing the pouch to the blood-stained grass, he turned upward.

“I fought all the way to the middle of this field to this small mound on which I stand, hoping that with my royal guard protecting me, I would bolster my men’s resolve. See this matter thoroughly stamped out for myself. A demonic invasion in my own land…But now I see this is the perfect trap, and the man responsible...”

Behind Sebastian, the battle raged with the din of steel clashing on iron and the yells of men and demon, but the men’s were overlapping the screeches and roars of the fiend army. Sebastian looked around him and behind, and sure enough, the line of his reinforcements, having joined fully with Father’s army, had succeeded in pushing the line of demons back, past the small mound that Father stood. Not the most strategically or wisely done manoeuvre, but Sebastian’s charge had broken the imp’s resolve, and the men now had the field. Immense as it was, the field was surrounded by a sheer, steep ridge nearly on all sides like a grassy bowl. Gwyniliaff Hill stood as a small mountain before a short field, spanning several yards before a sheer drop into the mountainous villages of the Brekan Shards below.

As remote as the Brekan was, this was still well within Father’s kingdom. Their leader was bold indeed to launch such an offensive and summon his forces via portal this close to home…

“The day is ours, Father. Look, the enemy retreats!”

“Not while their leader breathes.” Father’s voice drew his gaze back to him, and then up at where he was looking.

Far away, yet high enough to loom over them, was the stony outcrop on which the leader and his four imposing honour guards stood. Father was looking up at the being in the centre, shrouded, Sebastian could see, with the dulled crimson, lined with black linen or silk, perhaps, around the sleeves and hood. The hooded robe was priest-like in its weave and cloth. Or like a sorcerer…

It was only when Sebastian looked closer that he could see only the mouth of the being. And that the skin around him appeared a rotten, pale brown colour. Not like a shade of skin tone, but rather a pallor of rotting death. He saw the being’s lips curl back, revealing the distinct look of rotting, yellow fangs. The rest of its head, save its nose, which appeared to be two flat holes on its rotting face, was obscured under its hood and a translucent veil of a grey quality covering its eyes.

Father’s loud voice carried over the roar of battle, easier perhaps to hear now that it had partially subsided in volume.

“Callidor! Arch-priest in service to Astalloth! The tide of battle turns in my favour, and your assassin has failed! We have your men routed! Stand them down or face further bloodshed!”

_Callidor…that was what the half-dead scout who came back to Father said, with the heads of his regiment dangling from his neck. That name, of a demonic priest, one of the high ranking members of the clergy of the Tower of Inclement Desire, deep within one of the lowest circles in Hell._

The priest was motionless, holding his black staff with the blood red gem glowing what Sebastian could only tell was dark hellish sorcery, and he wondered if perhaps he had heard him. Then he rose his slender hand, the wide sleeves of his robe ending at his bony elbows. One simple gesture, to stop.

One of the motionless honour guards, to the front and left of Callidor and armed with a crude halberd taller than it’s imposing height, reached to its side and produced a rotting, dirt-brown coloured horn, curved like one hacked off a bull’s head. It rose it to its visor, to the gap under its nose and blew it into it. A deep, brassy note rung out through the air, and the chorus of snarls, snaps and hisses and bellows subsided to a near quiet lull.

There was then the dissonant rabble of feet and claws striking the earth, as the imp forces, beastly and man-like, scuttled back like rodents to their line, near and before the outcrop from which their leader surveyed the field.

Sebastian saw Father raise his arm, and the men gradually fell silent, their curses and roars falling to a quiet still, where only the moans and wails of the injured and the grieving rose up amongst the steady hollow metal sound of armoured plate scraping against each other.

The battle was brought to a standstill, and yet Sebastian found himself unable to breathe, at least not as loudly in case one loud breath broke the fragile halt-of-arms that now bloomed in this unlikely place.

Ahead, Sebastian saw hundreds of glowing amber and yellow eyes, blinking like hounds in the dark under armour and scale. Eyes that hungered for mortal man’s blood. Sebastian felt his heart harden at the sight, and refused to let his guard fall. He turned up to Callidor on instinct, as the priest’s hand fell.

And he began to speak.

“You have indeed bested me, Artovius King.” The priest’s voice was like many that Sebastian had before from a demon’s lips, with a disembodied cacophony of voices, warped and twisted yet clear enough in its elocution to be understood. Yet listening to it was enough to make something twist inside Sebastian in revulsion, enough to make his skin crawl.

“And indeed, I am at another disadvantage, it seems, my liege. For I confess, I knew not of the assassin in your ranks, although I pity you, for your inability to keep your own house in order and free…of treason…”

 _He’s lying. Of course a demon priest would lie about his involvement with plots and assassins._ Sebastian thought to himself as Callidor continued in an imperious, slimy drawl.

“…but if you think that I will meekly surrender to your men, you are sorely mistaken!”

With a raise of his red-gem staff, Callidor slammed the butt of it to the stone, loud enough to echo throughout the entire hill.

Something moved to Sebastian’s right in the distance, at the top of the steep periphery of the bowl of Gwynilaff Hill, and glancing up, he beheld a throng of demons, each one as tall and imposing as the honour guard surrounding the priest.

Each one was holding by the scruff of their neck, a prisoner. Dirty and unwashed by the look of them, but alive. They swayed weakly with their heads bowed and their hands and legs bound in cuffs of black iron, and appeared dressed in crude shreds of sack-cloth. They appeared a mixture of races. White men, black men, a lanky grey skinned elvanoe, one stockily built dwavaren woman, and a worryingly high amount of women of varying race and age, some with black and blonde of hair and others grey and wispy.

They were accompanied by smaller bodies, clumsy and stumbling, their patchy, poorly woven cloths covering their entire bodies and the tops of their legs as the guards who held them roughly pulled them forward. They too varied in race and size some small enough to barely reach the knees of the imposing demon guards that held them.

Children…elvanoe, dwavaren, human…

“As your eyes may witness,” Callidor spoke with theatrical aplomb. “I have gathered more hostages and prisoners to add to my slave ranks in one single day. Seek to end my life, or fire a single arrow in my direction, and I will have my guards draw and quarter each and every one of them before your very eyes!”

“Bastard…” Sebastian cursed him.

“Easy, son.” Father lifted a steadying hand in his direction.

“Their lives hang, on your next order, noble Longland King.” Callidor spat, with none of the reverence that his mangled lips uttered.

 _What do we do?_ Sebastian wanted to say, but held his tongue, staring at Father as he lowered his head, watching his brown eyes flicker to the side as he considered a plan. Then with one slow breath that made his breastplate rise, he looked up again and spoke.

“Callidor, I propose an exchange.” He suggested, pausing long enough between his first and second sentence long enough for Callidor to acknowledge them. “Perhaps the disfavour of your dark master will be less painful, when he sees that you have returned to him with men to spare for your next crusade, as opposed to no men, or slaves to return with at all!”

Sebastian could tell that Callidor was grimacing from the lofty perch on which he stood. He could make out the priest’s narrow fingers working, as if literally trying to keep a hold of a possession he knew he was about to lose.

“I assume you desire me to relinquish my hard-won prizes. I will not. They are mine by rite of conquest. What could you possibly offer in this exchange of yours?” The priest pointed his bony, dead finger down at Father.

Father straightened up, seeming to stand even taller in his golden suit of armour, uncowed by the foulness from the demon priest’s presence above him.

“I could easily ask my men to resume the rout of your forces and bring you to me in chains, but if I did and you killed your captives, it would easily sour my victory.”

“How bold of you to assume that I am one to be easily caught.” Callidor replied with a murderous tone in his voice. “My patience grows short, as do the seconds of life my captives have.”

“Then hear this!” Father spoke. “I will not seek to capture you, but to free the slaves under your bondage. That is all I will take and you can return to your master, with my regards and a fond wish to never set eyes on your kind in my land again. To…purchase them from you…I propose a duel.”

_A duel!_

Callidor seemed to falter slightly, before settling. Perhaps by Father’s words, he must have feared for his own life. Luckily for the slimy fiend, there were additional rules.

“I will bring forth a champion of my choosing,” Father continued. “to match a champion of your choosing!

The words seemed to rise up to Callidor like the mist that rose from Father’s mouth as he laid out his terms.

“If my chosen fighter wins, you may withdraw your men and live, provided that you surrender your hostages to us, no more harmed than they may or may not have been already. If your champion prevails, we will pay whatever ransom you demand for the safe return of your prisoners and also allow you and your men to retreat.”

Callidor’s hooded head turned to his left, in the direction of the far-off prisoners in irons. Sebastian could see his lips peeling back in an animalistic-like grimace. Father’s terms seemed fair enough, but were they fair enough to a demon priest, or any being as crooked as he?

His hands seemed to clench and tighten into fists, around the staff and at the empty air respectively, before he lowered his head, and rose it finally to address Father.

“I accept.” Callidor’s warped voice echoed across the misty battlefield.

There was a very audible sound of sighs and hushed whispers of relief behind Sebastian’s head.

“On one condition.” Callidor interrupted with a raise of his left finger. “Should I suspect foul play, I will hack off the head of the smallest child, and feed its body to one of my brutes. You can keep its head and explain to its mother, if it’s still alive in the village I stole it from, what happened to the rest of it.”

“So be it.” Father replied with an even pace to his words. “I have no counter-threat to reply with, save that if you harm any of the hostages, you will have reneged on the deal you just struck with a king, and be subject to further routing and likely, an execution by my hand or your master’s. And a demon’s word is as good as their bond, is it not?”

Callidor seemed to simmer, perhaps upset that his vile threat had not had the effect it had on the king.

“It is.” He glowered back.

“Then let us clear the field of our wounded and dead, or make a space sufficient to form a ring.” Father demanded with certainty.

“…Agreed.” Callidor also relented. “I will prepare my champion. See to it that you prepare yours…for a quick and bloody death.”

And turning with a sweep of his red cloak, the half-dead priest turned and strode away from the outcrop, and out of sight, flanked by the tramping feet of his honour guard, holding their halberds with both hands.

Sebastian let out a breath, shaky and shamefully afraid. To face down a mortal enemy of Ath-Kind, of human, elf and dwarf alike…

He looked at Father as he was turning away.

“Father, I didn’t know he had hostages.”

“His kind always do, as a contingency.” Father spoke, sheathing his sword into the earth so that he could adjust his gauntlet with his shield hand. “It is a strategy he has learned well from studying our kind in warfare.”

Sebastian looked up at the hostages, still stood on the edge, Some, he saw, were held by groups of three, even four by one demon guard in his black iron forged armour. Whole family groups under one chain.

“Maybe…” A quick, brash idea appeared in his mind. “Maybe while the duel is happening, I could take a few men and-”

“No, son!” Father spoke, low and harsh reproach in his voice. “Were you not listening? Callidor will have them killed if he suspects treachery from us. And I will not spend more lives than I need to for this victory, be it yours or the lives of those families up there. Nor will I spend more men.”

Sebastian felt his cheeks burn with shame, before Father’s words registered in his mind. “You don’t want to capture or kill him.”

“Ideally, I would storm the very city of the Circle of Lust and take Astalloth’s head from his shoulders. He has played his hand in these…disturbances in my realm for too long, and there is a dark plan behind his ploys, including this invasion. I know it.” Father finished tightening his gauntlet before retrieving his sword.

“But I won’t do so while giving him the satisfaction of knowing I had to sacrifice innocent lives to defeat him. I was not raised that way, and neither are you, my son.” His eyes found his, and they seemed to shine with the gold of his armour, like that of a great lion.

“Yes, Father.” Sebastian spoke, his heart swelling with pride at the reminder that he was this holy man’s and warrior’s son.

“Now, help the men clear the field. Be gentle with the wounded.” Father turned his crowned head up to the men behind him, and began to stride down the mound, the royal guard turning with him.

“Men! Clear the field so that it is sufficient space for a duel! Carry the dead and take care with the wounded! Have two men a soldier if needed! Pick up weapons, limbs and standards, wherever your eyes see them.”

Father turned and looked at a man on the ground, clunching his right arm.

“Go to, my son, then re-join me near the front of the line.”

“Yes, Father.” Sebastian nodded, and side-stepped Jortan’s imposing armoured bulk to approach the man. He stopped to lift and sheathe his sword in his belt, using his shield hand to keep the sheath steady as he slid the longsword home with a crisp snap, before resuming his approach.

“Soldier, can you move?” He asked as he approached him. The man did not answer him. He had a leather cap that covered his head and his shoulders, and had a thick bush black beard.

“My hand…my hand…bastard imp took my hand…”

Sebastian’s heart stopped as he took in the sight before him. The bearded soldier’s sword arm lay on the grass, a hand clutching a eight-flanged blood-stained mace and a bit of the arm with it, sleeved in a heavy olive green tunic, up to near the elbow. The man was clutching at it, and a nervous tingle, sympathetic to the man’s injury ran up Sebastian’s forearm.

_The poor man…_

“Let me help you.”

The man looked up at him, bloodshot brown eyes and his mouth open and bloodied about the lips.

“My lord…I’m sorry…one of the imps, I got distracted and he…”

“Don’t apologise.” Sebastian gently admonished him. “Be grateful that you’re alive. There are elven healers at the palace and dwavaren craftsmen that can fashion a working limb for you.”

“I’d…I’d rather have my own one back…” The man looked forlornly at his severed limb, as Sebastian squatted awkwardly by his side so that he could pick him up under his left arm.

“Then take it with you.” He told the soldier. “The elvanoe might be able to reattach it, and if not, well at least the dwarvaren will have something to work from.”

“Yes…I think I should…” The man said. He sounded far off, distracted, and his breathing suddenly began to grow shallow and weak.

“You’re going into shock, let me carry you. Here, let me take your arm, and your other one.” Sebastian offered weakly as a jest.

“Heh…” The man spoke. He was of stockier build than Sebastian was but stood easily enough. Sebastian’s left hand reached down and plucked the limb from the grass. He cradled it under his arm as he began to carry the man back to the line, flanked side by side by men of varying health and appendages making their way or being escorted to the line at the side of the hill that he had charged over. As per the king’s orders, they carried either their brethren or bundles of weaponry in their arms.

The man moaned and fell slightly, and Sebastian nearly swore at the unexpected increase of dead weight.

“Easy, easy…I have you, easy. You have any mates to look after you?”

“Allen…Allen, he’s…he’s…an archer at the back…lightweight drinker but could tell the funniest…stories.”

“That’s good, that’s good!” Sebastian glanced at him, tossing his head to flick a curl that had fallen over his right eye. The man was starting to look pale around his cheeks.

“And his wife’s so bloody fit…”

“That’s…also nice.” Sebastian replied in the same amendable manner, unsure how exactly to reply to that. “Do you have a name, soldier?”

“Roy! Roy!” A near squeaky voice from a whip-thin man wearing a pointed brown leather cap and a dark grey jerkin, with a thin nose and large eyes appeared from the crowd of men and knights, shoving his way through. He held a huge yew longbow in his left hand, and a quiver of a few goose-feather flecked arrows on his back. His large eyes searched about before landing on Sebastian and the man he carried.

“Are you Allen?” Sebastian paused to ask him.

“My prince…Roy…” The archer staggered slightly as if hit by a blow. “What happened!”

“Don’t worry, I have his hand.” Sebastian did his best to assure the man. “Take him to a priest, he’s losing blood and going into shock. Keep the arm no matter what the priests and healers tell you. I’ll cover whatever fees the dwarves charge for a replacement.”

“My lord.” Allen could only reply, slinging his bow across his shoulder and back as Sebastian stopped carrying Roy and clumsily passed him over to the archer’s smaller shoulders. Allen pointed his nose to the crowd and cried out over the voices.

“Gazzer! Gazzer! Where are you! I got Roy!”

A bulky lad emerged from the crowd next, close-shaven in head and face and dressed as a pikemen who had lost his helm. His eyes met Sebastian’s before they met Allen’s.

“Oh, fuck me, Roy! What happened?!”

“God be with you!” Sebastian waved his hand, and Allen and Gareth, he assumed nodded back at him as they carried Roy away, Allen pocketing the severed arm under his armpit.

Sebastian turned and walked up the line of men, clenching his jaw muscles and bracing himself for the sights and sounds he would doubtless encounter.

“My eyes…I can’t see, my eyes…what am I going to be without my eyes…” A moustached black soldier man spoke, sitting up on his backside in the grass, ignoring his friend, a knight who had opened the visor of his helm to show a puffy, bloated brown toned face with tears streaming down the cheeks. The knight’s eyes watered as they met the gory red pits of his friend’s own. They had been plucked out, likely by a lasher’s barbed tongue like a frog spearing a fly from a leaf.

Sebastian stopped and knelt down by his side.

“This is Prince Sebastian.” He spoke. “You fought with honour and distinction today, and I will see to it that you and your family are rewarded with as much compensation and honour and renown in the hall of heroes as I can give you. Your life is not over because of your injury. Our healers can restore some of your sight and we have dwavarens that can craft ocular implants. They won’t be the same as your first, but they will help. I will cover whatever fees they demand from the treasury.”

“My prince…” the man, a footman by the make of his brown tunic and the metal studs of his gloves spoke, his breath hitching as he sobbed. “Without my eyes, I will never see the glory of today’s victory, or the kindness you give to me, but my days will not be so bitter knowing my family will be taken care of. Thank you.”

“Rest, soldier.” Sebastian spoke, before turning to the knight. “Good man, take him back to the rear and to the priests. There will likely be a queue and the healers will prioritise the most dire injuries first.”

“There’s nothing that can be done for me now.” The footman spoke. “Besides, they’ll prioritise the dying white man over a black one any day.”

“Troyn!” His armoured friend spoke in a hushed tone to try and silence. Sebastian felt his cheeks grow cold and his blood run icily cold.

_No. That would not come to pass. Never! Not for a soldier, or any person, elf, or dwarf of colour in my kingdom!_

“If any one of the priests or healers pass you over, I will have them stripped of their job and flogged in the square for all to see.” Sebastian spoke, his voice turning raw as it rose in his throat. “They have a duty of care to all men of rank in my father’s army, regardless of their race or their skin. I will be by later on to check in on the wounded but I will seek you out. You will tell me with full disclosure and no fear of harm if you are neglected in any way, am I understood?”

“Y…yes my lord.” Troyn eventually replied. The knight bowed his opened helm at Sebastian, before stooping to pick up his friend.

_After all the changes I am trying to bring and yet a man of colour still fears the rule of white men in my city’s rank…_

Sebastian put it to the back of his mind for the time being. Another battle to resume once he returned home.

Another raised voice drew his attention, further along the line of injured men ahead.

“Hold on! Just hold on! Come on, Brett, don’t fall asleep! Don’t fall asleep!”

_Oh no…_

He saw the troubling sight of a woman, a knight with her helm thrown to the side, knelt over a pikeman lying with his face staring up at the clouds. Her armour rustled as she pressed both hands against his chest with strong, violent pumps, her fingers lacing together. Her short hair was of a light blonde and tied in a bun at the back of her head as she looked down on the middle aged man she was trying to revive.

“I don’t care if I have to break your ribs to get you to breathe again, just…fucking wake up!” Her voice was starting to break under the coarseness of her own shouting.

“Lady Alise?” Sebastian spoke.

Lady Alise turned, her right eye covered by a patch of woven elvanoin leaf and her left untouched yet red-veined in tears. “My lord, Brett, he… he won’t wake up! I’m his wife’s sister. She’s got a son and another child on the way! I promised to keep him safe and bring him back! I promised, but he won’t wake up.”

Sebastian said nothing, choosing only to approach with tentative care and kneel down on the left side of the pikeman. Brett, his name apparently was, with a receding hairline, but a lively, healthy look to his face. He had a mole on his chin, and his chin was covered to his ears with a beard of auburn hair. His eyes were half-closed, and he gave no signs of life as Alisane returned to desperately pump into his chest again and again.

Sebastian studied Brett, and it did not take long for him to identify what was wrong. A lasher had got him, cutting a line on the inner seam of his breeches. A lasher’s claws were more than strong enough to cut through the thickest of leather and roughly hewn tunics with sufficient force. Judging from the blood that had pooled in the earth about his legs, the claw had cut deep, and severed his femoral artery.

Brett was dead.

“Lady Alise…I’m sorry…”

“No…” The knight shuddered and sobbed where she sat shaking her head and murmuring to herself. “No, no, no, no…”

“He is dead. His leg was cut in a place where blood flows like a ceaseless tide. He had bled out. I’m sorry.” Sebastian felt the mortal, dreadful spectre of death move through his heart.

And nearly felt it break as Lady Alise placed her face in her gauntlets and began to weep. Sebastian could only lay his hand on Brett’s chest and whisper a quick prayer.

“May the peace of Paxath Leonis, Lion of the Sun bless and keep your soul in the warmth of his sight, and watch over this one’s family in their journey ahead.”

Sebastian stood, and seeking the eyes of nearby men and women, he spoke loud enough to sustain their attention.

“Men, I need any able hand to carry this man off the field with the care and respect as befits a fallen comrade. Any friends to Lady Alise here are needed now more than ever.” He glanced down at the still weeping knight in her dirt-covered and stained armour, her form shivering and shaking where she knelt.

“I am sorry.” He spoke, and turned to walk ahead.

_Damn the army of Lust to a hell blacker and more vile than the one they crept out of today…_

He saw the royal guard surrounding the golden figure of Father, and he hurried in his step to meet them.

 _I wonder what champion Father will choose…_ He pondered as he approached. Emree’s helm lifted as he saw him and stood aside, with some reluctance as he did.

_The death of Ervik is only moments past._ Sebastian reflected. _I do not begrudge the man, trained to show immense discipline some hesitation in letting me, slayer of his brother-in-arms pass him without incident._

“Thank you, Emree.” Sebastian spoke. “I will get to the bottom of what happened with Ervik and find out who turned him. This I swear by Leonis above.”

“My Lord, Ervik was…a dear friend…If you can, find the bastards responsible.” The guardsman spoke under his helm.

“I will.” Sebastian nodded, glad at least to know that the guard bore him no obvious hatred.

“Son.” Father’s voice called him away, and with one final nod to his father’s royal guard, Sebastian turned to meet Father.

“Have you chosen a champion yet?” Sebastian asked.

Father had a tired look on his face that disquieted Sebastian’s heart, and he was opening his mouth to speak when a loud, hideously warped voice called out and echoed throughout the battlefield. It was easily Callidor’s, smug and filled with mocking, self-certainty, and sadistic, bloodthirsty intent.

“King Artovius! Your time to choose a champion…is finally up! I have chosen one among my ranks. Do not be found wanting in your half of the bargain.”

_Already?!_

Sebastian looked to Father, unable to conceal his newfound anxiety. Father looked at him and nodded, speaking assurance with only a glance, before he turned in the direction of Callidor. Sebastian followed the glance and saw that Callidor was still atop his rock, and still flanked by his guards, but this time the prisoners were placed behind him, lined up to the right side of the rock on which the priest stood.

“You will have my champion soon enough!” Father called back to the lone figure on the hill before him in a loud ringing voice.

Sebastian knew that Father would pick one soon, and if he chose him, he would gladly fight one duel to put an end to the skirmish and free the prisoners.

“I have decided.” Father spoke, and Sebastian braced himself for the honour of being chosen.

“I will go.”

_What?!_

“Your Highness!” Oskar, shorter than both Emree and Jotan turned from his post with his back to the king and turned to face the king. “Send one of us to fight in your stead! You have already risked too much by engaging in battle today!”

“So too did my son in coming here.” Father replied coolly. “But it is too late now for rebukes or to undo what has been done, and my son will lead you in my stead, should I fall. I had meant for this to be a simple affair…” He spoke, lifting his gauntlets to the clasps securing his cloak to his shoulders between his neck and his pauldrons.

“…one battle to quell a demonic uprising, and yet there are more lives at stake than I can walk away from if I ever did at all.”

With a clumsy pull and a flick of his fingers, one clasp came undone, followed by the other, and his white cloak fell in a heap on the grass.

“Father…” Sebastian spoke, unable to believe what was happening. “Father, I was told by Mother to keep you safe. The dream said you would die today without my help.”

“Your vision, if I recall correctly, involved silver and a knife. Ervik was the traitor…” Father spoke, rolling his shoulders and offering his shield, a triangular boss facing with its point facing downwards, rimmed with golden and filled with white, scarred and blood-stained oak. Sebastian took it, in spite of his heart and mind fully objecting to it.

“…And you saved me from him. The vision was foiled, the prophecy proven false. I will not die today. But, in case I do, Edward, Tobias’s squire, has been charged with the ransom coffer. He will be at the rear with the healers. There should be two hundred gold inside. More than enough to buy the slaves’s freedom.”

“Father, no, I can’t let you do this! Send me! I’ve proven myself more than capable!” Sebastian insisted.

“Are you hurt?” Father’s steady gaze and measured tone fixed him where he stood. He could only again answer honestly.

“A few scratches and nicks, maybe some bruises.” Sebastian took a deep breath. “…And my head’s little dizzy from the brute hitting me.”

Father’s jaw muscles tightened for a moment before he spoke again.

“Then your involvement is out of the question. Not with possibly a head wound to slow your reflexes. Stay behind the royal guard and off the field. Whatever happens, for the sake of the prisoners, do not interfere.”

“But Father, I-”

“Am I understood?” Father’s tone halted any further resistance or defiance.

Sebastian swallowed hard, wetting his dry throat.

“…Yes, Father.”

The king nodded, before lifting his hands up and gingerly lifting the crowned helm he wore from his head. He shook black curls loose that had been pressed to his head by the helmet and the sweat that adhered his near-shoulder length hair to his scalp.

“Jotan, take the crown.” He spoke to the tall guardsmen, who turned, sheathed his sword in his belt and graciously accepted the helm with a courteous bow.

“As you wish, my liege.”

And with that, King Artovius strode forward and drew his longsword from his belt.

He strode forward five paces, seven, than nine, before turning and addressing his men, including Sebastian, as the rustling giant silver bodies of the royal guard began to move and partially obscure his view of him with their tower shields and their bodies.

“I, your king, will avenge the loss of your brothers and sisters in arms. More people have died in this skirmish on this hill today than I can accept, and today an assassin has failed to kill me. My son, who saved my life this day, will lead you in my place, should I die today, be it in honourable combat, or trickery from the devil’s side!”

Sebastian felt his lip begin to quiver, and fear’s icy claws grasp into his heart. Nothing in all his heart no matter what he saw or experienced would prepare him to see Father die. He could steel his heart and mind for the suffering of others because they were not of his blood, or of his closest friends, but seeing Father die would destroy him. Reduce him to a broken wreck. So few in the world existed that gave him a sense of calm and confidence as his father did.

A hideous vision arose in his mind of a single arrow being shot from the mist covered crowd of demons, with their eyes glowing in the fog, killing him in one single act of cowardice.

But no arrows came. Instead, the crowd of glowing, blinking eyes and warped faces began to part.

Father strode to the clearest section of the entire battlefield, and waited, as something massive began to lumber through the crowd, muscling through and pushing past the eclectic mix of lashers, footsoldiers and even making one brute withdraw a few steps when it neared him.

Father lifted his sword and thrust it again into the ground, before kneeling down in front of it, likely whispering a quick prayer. For Sebastian’s safety, for Mother’s safety, for the welfare of the kingdom. He then pocketed something from the collar of his breastplate, lifted it to his lips and kissed it, before stuffing it back under his shirt.

The demon’s chosen champion came forward.

He was a full head taller than Father, and Sebastian believed him to another demon, a ram soldier by the shape of its curled horns on both sides of its head like the imp brutes. But as the champion drew closer, Sebastian noticed that he seemed more human in shape than the others, and by the time he drew closer to Father, Sebastian had noted the very human shape of his muscular legs.

Even from this distance, spanning yards away from the centre, Sebastian could see the long beard of the champion, flowing down to his chest, grey and flowing in the gentle wind that blew across the hill. This was a man. A huge human warrior, perhaps of kaltic or narudic heritage. His immense shoulders were covered by the skinned limbs of a small bear, its claws acting as its breastplate. The rest of him was covered in a shirt of grey chainmail, leaving his bulging arms bare and a kilt of the same make as well that left the knees and his feet bare as well.

The warrior, much like a barbarian in his bestial appearance, held a strange looking staff in its hands, and his helm covered most of his face, save for his eyes, the middle of his nose and his centre of his bearded lips. His eyes burned red, red like beacons of hellish flame, and Sebastian knew that this was a denizen, if not a servant of Hell.

“So you have placed yourself forward as a champion.” Callidor’s sinister voice echoed across the hill again. “Some would not deem that wise. For the champion I have brought forward harbours great hatred, borne to the point of undying, strong enough that he would make any pact, no matter how dark, for the chance to reap his revenge.”

Callidor gestured downward to the demon barbarian warrior, who was beginning to breathe heavily, panting hard and sending clouds of hot vapour into the already foggy landscape.

“Lord Crannog. Your chance for revenge begins now, starting with the head…of the King of Longland!”

With a guttural, soul-rattling bellow, the barbarian lowered his head like a bull and lifted his staff.

Two massive flaming blades, thick and downward sloping in design, covered in strange, ancient runes along their edge, exploded into life from the top half of the staff, birthing sparks that fizzled and burnt out on the wet grass bellow him. With his double-edged hell-ax in hand, sizzling and fiery, the barbarian charged bellowing towards Father, who was lifting his sword close to his head in a defensive stance that pointed the blade’s point at the demon. As Crannog rose his blade to sweep down at his head, Father ran forward and brought his own sword ringing through the air to crash against his glowing red ax-blade.

The flash of light that emanated from their clash left spectres of light dancing before Sebastian’s eyes, yet he could not take his eyes off the duellists as they threw themselves and their blades at each other with every ounce of bloody minded determination they had in their very souls.


	4. Lord Crannog

In the initial flurry, Sebastian feared that Father would be overwhelmed by the barbarian’s ax flying at him from all directions, but Father’s golden armour remained visible enough to catch the light of the fiery red blades, bathing him a reddish, golden glow.

Crannog was fury and fire, twirling his great ax with its fiery blades that seemed to be made of a substance strong enough to match Father’s sword. Their blades matching in strength, Crannog began to use his other strengths to his advantage, using his superior size and weight to press Father back.

Father’s cheeks puffed as he dodged and parried any hit he could catch with his sword, ducking the sizzling ax that burned brightly in the afternoon mist. The sun was beginning to set somewhere above the clouds, Sebastian could tell. The plain grey sky was beginning to darken, and Sebastian looked back towards the duellists. If Father didn’t win this soon, the demons would hold the advantage with their eyes granting them unparalleled vision in the dark, their oldest and most terrible advantage in the days of old when man, elf and dwarf huddled around fires and in caves.

Crannog came on, howling as only a man broken by hatred and forged to be nothing else than a beast could howl. Mist rose like clouds of sulphur from his horned helmet as he rose and reaped the wet bloody soil with his ax, carving gouges and reaves in the grass, hot enough to nearly ignite it before the damp of the air and the ground smothered it, leaving only plumes of smoke to drift and add to the fog that had begun to descend on Gwynilaff’s Hill, stained by battle.

Father side-stepped another overhead slash, but was too slow to catch Crannog’s follow-up blow. Thrusting the top of his axe forward, Crannog slammed Father’s breastplate hard enough to send stumbling back. Sebastian heard Father grunt and saw the bright orange glowing parts of his breastplate where the blunt but still searing hot flames had punched into his armour. The golden armoured king grunted from the pain. If he had not had his armour he would be doubling over and clutching his chest by now.

Crannog roared and lifted his ax, came down with another blow towards Father’s skull. The armour the king wore however was light enough to allow him to side-step and counter, albeit in a delayed, not-so-graceful fashion as one wearing leather or lighter armour might do. Father’s blade caught the ax at it came down, re-directing the blade to continue on an altered course to bury itself in the dirt.

Father’s next move was to re-position his blade at the hulking tricep of the barbarian, and rip away, cutting a gouge in his arm that sent black and orange blood spilling into the air. Crannog howled, more enraged than in pain and ripping his ax out by sheer brute force, he swung his weapon about him, forcing Father to retreat. Crannog once again had Father on the defensive, forcing him back across the field to Sebastian’s right.

Two more exchanges, sparks of white and red flashing brightly from steel and conjured flame and the warriors clashed, with Father’s blade poised downward to prevent Crannog’s ax from shearing him in half. They held, and both their strengths proved the equal.

Then Crannog placed his hand on the butt of his ax and swung forward and Father’s head snapped back from the blow he received to his lower jaw. Father stumbled away, exposing his back, and Crannog’s blade came sweeping to the right, cutting into his back and right side.

“Father!” Sebastian called out from behind the royal guard, who responded by bunching up in their formation. Sebastian was forced to stand on his toes to see more of the fight, to see if Father had fallen.

He had heard Father’s cry of pain, brief and short, and Sebastian could see his face clenched in pain, his eyes screwed shut as he placed his sword-hand, still clutching his sword to the glowing wound, hissing as he tested the wound.

Crannog lifted his ax to his right arm, but then halted, wincing. With his huge fingered hand, more like a bear paw than a man’s he lifted his free hand to his upper arm and clutched at it, before withdrawing it and glimpsing the black and orange-tinged blood in his fingers.

The fight seemed to pause at a standstill, as Father changed hands of his blade to hold his sword in his left gauntlet, before testing his injury with his sword hand.

 _Cauterised… a wound by a hot blade won’t bleed…_ Sebastian told himself. _He won’t bleed out, but his movement will be hampered on his right side. He just needs to be careful. He can do this. Age is only a number and he’s in his prime. He can do this._

Crannog was snarling, and Sebastian could see his eyes glowing from under his helm, unlike Ervik. Sebastian could not decide what was worse, a killer with soulless black eyes, or one whose eyes burned with hellish hatred and violent intent.

“Lord Crannog.” Father’s voice drew his eyes back to the gold-armoured king as he spoke in panting gasps. “By your look and garb, I see that you are not part of the demon rabble behind you. What fate has turned a mighty warrior as yourself to the service of evil?”

The horned helmet shook, breath rising from his face like smoke from a furnace.

“Evil?” His rough voice held a strong accent. It sounded regional, maybe from the west. Cymland, perhaps?

“Is that what you’ll call me?” The larger man in furs and his flaming ax shrugged his shoulders, readying himself perhaps for another charge. Sebastian’s gut tightened.

“You are in service to Callidor, archpriest to the Lord of Lust, Astalloth.” Father stated. “Surely you are aware of the intent and actions of your master?”

“I do not care about the desire of my master!” Crannog replied, and turned to spit into the ground. “When I was a man, I had no master other than myself. My woman, my children, my tribe was only thing I lived for in the beauty of Longland.”

His huge free hand clenched into a fist, and Sebastian could catch a glimpse of yellowed, bared teeth under his helm. He noticed also a trail of long silver hair, twisted into a pleated tail behind his back above the fur of the bear he wore.

“Until your ancestors, greedy and unhappy with their lot from the mainland, swept across the sea, and took what was rightfully ours!”

He stepped forward, his head still lowered like a belligerent steer as he growled loud enough for everyone near enough to hear.

“Your ancestors, from the Korbesian Empire…from five hundred years ago!”

“Five hundred years?” Sebastian repeated to himself.

“So…” Father spoke, no longer favouring his side and lifting his right hand to rejoin his sword. “You are a revenant. A Kaltic tribesman from the days before Korbes invaded the shores.”

“A native! A rightful descendant, and child of Longland and her sister-lands!” The man’s voice, terrifying in his raw, guttural fury as it was, was not as warped or demonic as Callidor’s, Sebastian only noticed. It was still human, still untainted by demonic magics, even though their black and fiery blood flowed in his veins.

“I swore by all my ancestors, to the gods that once walked this land before your ancestors colonised it and burned our homes and crucified anyone who dared speak out against them, who shipped my people like cattle to divide between entertainment and labour. Bodies for bloodshed and breeding and slavery!” The giant warrior seemed to tremble with rage, releasing his dark, hot-blooded fury and curses and hatred from his mouth, that had been pent up, roiling inside like a tempest that only years upon years of denial, torture and torment could bring on. Yet compared to the atrocious measures demon lords were rumoured to employ in the training of their cruellest warriors, Sebastian felt it all but paled to the agony the revenant had endured during his mortal life, before he came to the service of Callidor.

“You cast your grievance and hatred on me for crimes that my long distant ancestors committed long ago.” Father spoke, beginning to step to his left to circle Crannog. Crannog lowered his head and began to do the same. The warriors began to pace a slow circle around each other they spoke, measuring each other as dancers in Father’s Great Hall would do. “Crimes that have passed long into memory and time. I cannot be held guilty for the sins committed before my own birth!”

Soon, Father approached Sebastian’s right field of vision, and Crannog ambled like a stalking bear in his furs and monstrous build to his left. Soon, he could see the fullness of Crannog’s helm covered face, which exposed enough of his hate-filled revenant eyes, and his lips peeled back to reveal a more human and more disturbing vision of hatred than Callidor’s snarls of contempt.

“I spit on your denial, imperial whelp with a vatin name! I spit on it, and your denial!” The barbarian roared at the top of his lungs to the golden king. “Your legacy is built on the enslavement and rape of my land and my people. On blood and suffering!

He pounded his chest as he spoke, his voice taking on a peal of agony. “My children… hacked to pieces and fed to the soldier’s hounds. My wife raped again and again, by Korbesian soldiers and hung from a tree while she was pregnant! Dark deeds by wild dogs led by greedy vain tyrants can only inspire hatred in a man, that will stay in his soul long after he is dead. Long enough and deep enough to make him outlast any damnation or punishment. A fire that will burn in his heart long in life and long after death.”

He shook his head as spoke, his thick grey eyebrows creasing in manic torment as his back faced his demon forces, and the king’s back faced Sebastian’s. “I tried to soothe the pain in my heart. Blood demanded blood! I raided villages and murdered korbesian children and women, before they caught me and nailed me to a tree to rot and die. But I don’t regret it. I hacked their heads off and took their souls for the lives your people stole from mine!”

Sebastian felt his cheeks pale and lose colour. He was aware of his hands beginning to shake, his own heart trembling with horror, sickening horror, as the sympathy he felt for the man was riven by the barbed blade of revulsion, stabbing into his heart.

_Do not think of them. Do not envision it. Don’t!_

Crannog’s broken, raw voice continued to bellow.

“And after I finally died, my own body weight suffocating me, the dark master approached me, offering me eternal life in exchange to serve him, and a chance to strike at Korbesia and her tainted seed, no matter what god they worshipped, be they that spiteful pantheon, or a lion nailed to a obelisk in a blood sacrifice! I could not pass by on such a chance!”

Now, they had finished their measuring dance, and stood in their resumed places. Father spoke after what felt like a full minute.

“I weep for you, Crannog of the Kalts.” He spoke with a waivering voice. “My pagan ancestors did unforgiveable things to your people. I know not what Callidor spoke of you about me, but I am not the same as my pagan ancestors. My god preaches forgiveness, tolerance and freedom from evil.”

He lifted his free hand, wincing with his eyes as his sword-arm lowered down, his burn wound possibly twinging. “You are a ghost seeking the blood vengeance of spectres long gone in the past. I grieve for you, and your suffering, but you must free yourself from the snares of Astalloth.” He gestured to his left, at the imp army and Callidor, stood on the hill, still surrounded by his honour guard.

“He dangles solace in front of you but will drown you when you try to reach for it! Lay down your weapon and I will try to help you find peace! On my honour as a king!”

The barbarian panted, and it appeared as if his violent ardour had been slackened by Father’s gentle words. His twin headed hellfire ax that had tasted Father’s blood stood crackling and spitting sparks, airborne embers that trailed from the blades and fell to sizzle and die out on the damp earth, a wisp of smoke spiralling through the air to signify their brief life and immediate end.

Then he shook his horned helm, and Sebastian felt his gut tighten as he looked up.

“Your honour?”

Father persisted.

“My wife, Queen Rhiannon, is Chieftain Rochlann's daughter of the Stone Bear Clan, whose family is from the far north. She is of Narudic and Kaltic blood, and I saved her life from a necromancer who sought her clan’s end. My marriage to her sealed an alliance between my people and hers. She rules with as much freedom and respect as I would give any woman in my kingdom.”

For a moment, Crannog lowered his ax, and Sebastian’s heart filled with a spark of hope. But then, he saw the bearded lips of the barbarian lift in an animalistic snarl. Mentioning the word wife might have been the very weapon that worked against Father’s efforts to pacify the revenant.

“Your honour…” Crannog spoke again. “False…spouting nonsense and honeyed words, from a position brought from privilege, from royalty!” His huge, dirt covered hands tightened around the haft and base of his ax. “The wealth of a foreign empire, ruling soil that was never their’s to take….”

His hell-ax suddenly began to glow brighter, more crimson, more fiery, as if the revenant was feeding his very agony and hatred into the blades.

“One good deed to a descendant of a tribe I do not know will not heal the hundred year wound you gouged in the history and magic of my land! Fuck your honour! My blood cries out for revenge, as does the blood of my ancestors! For my wife and for my children…you will die!”

And he widened his stance, crouching in a position ready to charge, ready to spring from his back foot and rush the king with every last ounce of fury he could muster.

Father’s hand lowered, as did his head, his own black hair, thinner and longer than Sebastian’s, briefly obscuring his face. A brief moment to mourn the man before him.

Before he rose his head and lifted his hand to join with his sword-hand holding his longsword.

“Then blood you shall have.”

With a soul-piercing yell, Crannog lifted his ax high above his head and charged, murder and death with every step of his charge and rallying cry.

Father lifted his sword up to his right side, and as Crannog approached, the king lunged and swept low, gashing a bloody furrow through Crannog’s right side. Crannog bellowed, stumbling to a staggering halt, before he turned and swung his ax again. Father ducked the retaliatory swing and countered with a low cut that hit below the protective material of the kilt, opening a line of red on his pale, dirt covered skin above his left knee.

Crannog howled and swung with a desperate one-handed swing. Father’s sword came down and slammed the ax down below the blade. Father was positioned with his right side facing Crannog, and with one brutal swing of his gauntlet, he cracked the side of Crannog’s helm with the back of his fist.

Crannog’s head span from the impact, and taking a moment to spit a wad of black blood, Crannog roared and charged like a bull into the king’s waist, hoping to tackle him. Father back-pedalled frantically to stop himself falling, and then dug his sabaton covered heels into the dirt. Crannog had not built up enough speed in the charge, and the king was able to plant his feet and hold the revenant where he stood. With one stroke he lifted his sword and brought the rounded dragon insignia covered pommel down hard on Crannog’s back. Crannog gasped but still held on, trying to get a hold of the armoured warrior so that he could throw him. Father’s pommel came down again, higher up his back where the fur met his immense neck. Crannog grunted and his hands fumbled.

Father grasped the barbarian’s shoulders and with one great effort, he drove his left knee up into the barbarian’s face with a crunch of metal on iron. Crannog cried out and stumbled back, leaving himself open as he floundered on his feet.

Father lifted his longsword and swung downward, the tip scoring across Crannog’s face. Crannog roared with pain and staggered away, bowing low and holding the left side of his face. When he looked up, Sebastian saw the line the sword had cut through the helmet, and a stream of blood fall from where the left eye was.

Crannog stood upright, grasped his flaming ax with both hands and came at the king again. He struck high and from bellow he swung up, trying to knock Father off balance or disarm him. Father’s grip held, and sparks exploded like flint on stone in the gathering gloom of the battlefield. Father’s blade deflected, parried, shunted aside and re-directed every one of Crannog’s manic, wild strikes.

Crannog brought about his own defeat with a poorly aimed thrust of his ax-head to try and knock Father down. Father’s sword parried it to his right as he side-stepped the thrust, lifted his longsword and swung down into Crannog’s right wrist.

Crannog roared into the sky, a roar that grew into a grief-stricken, frustrated wail as he lifted his other hand to clutch at his stump as it spurted blood, like Ervik’s did. Father stepped back, giving him a moment’s respite, while pointing his sword at the larger man as he fell to on his right uninjured knee.

Then the men watching behind Sebastian grew bold.

“Finish him, sire!”

“Yeah, get him! Kill him!”

“Go on, sire!”

Came a smattering of voices from the anxious group of soldiers.

“Quiet!” Sebastian turned and yelled behind him, raising his gauntlet. He would not have the men distract the king.

Crannog squeezed his bleeding stump as hard as he could, before he abandoned the pursuit and reaching down, retrieved his ax with his other hand and with some difficulty, pried it from his right hand. With a brief toss to right his grip so that he could better utilise his hold of the imposing weapon, he came at Father again. He strove at him with the last of his flagging strength, and Father batted aside each blood.

Then Father parried the blade aside and with one twisting slash, cut through the head of the ax. The sword, one of his many blessed weapons watered by the font of the Church like Sebastian’s own, cut through the black iron clasp at the top and with a spark of light and flame, the twin blades of the ax were extinguished. Crannog gasped, distracted by his shattered ax as it spat bursts of flame and red-hot sparks.

Father swung his sword down and low, and the impact of steel crunching through mail and punching into flesh and bone was hard enough to make everyone, even the royal guard wince, as it briefly echoed across the hill. Crannog bent over from the impact, gasping weakly for breath. Then with a breathless moan, he slowly fell forward. The king looked ahead, not at the man he had just slain, and as Crannog fell, he pulled and withdrew his blade, blood slick and dark along its entire grey metallic sheen and length with a wet, rasping scrape.

Crannog now rested on his knees, holding the great wound shorn into his mid-section, gasping weakly. His face, under the helm, seemed even more pale than ever.

Father turned to his left and walked a brief circle, before returning to face Crannog. He stared at him, and Sebastian saw that he was bleeding from the left side of his lip. He panted, and Sebastian knew that the fight had taxed his stamina heavily, but he still stood strong, even as a bit of blood seeped down from the wound in his right side. Then, he did something Sebastian did not expect.

Leaning forward, he grasped the right curved ram horn of Crannog’s helm and with a gentle tug, slid the helm off the warrior’s head. Sebastian gasped in surprise.

The man was elderly, perhaps older than Father, but had the look and make of an ox. He had a whole head of grey hair, with braids on both sides of his head in front of his ears to add with the braided tail on the back of his head. There was a rugged beauty to him in his freedom to grow and braid his hair however he wished, and on his left temple, before the scarred ruin of his left eye, he had what appeared to be faded blue runes of twirling, archaic and undeniably kaltic painted into his skin.

The cut Father made with his sword had run along the bridge of his nose and ended on his right cheek. His right eye still glowed with the reddish hue of a hell-possessed warrior, but there was an exhaustion, a sad fatigue that had crossed the elderly warrior’s features.

“Forgive me.” Father’s voice spoke, with genuine and sincere regret in his words.

Even on his knees, Crannog was a menacing, imposing specimen, and he shook his head slowly, but without the vehement anger to power his refusal.

“I will never forgive…but…if it is any consolation, I did not intend to fight with demons, much less these godless wretches that picked a fight with your lion god. I only wanted revenge, for my tribe, and my family.”

Father nodded slowly.

“Then I am sorry to have denied you even that.”

The warrior blinked his one eye shut, screwing up his bearded face as he held back his desire to weep. Instead what came out was a choked sob, and one tear falling down his now-wet remaining eye. A brief sniff to clear his nose, before he looked up at Father and asked.

“Do me one last mercy, if you’re as true to your Lion God as you say you are. Send me to the Under Land, where the fae, and the green giants, and all the old creatures that wandered the forest live, who used to wonder the forests of my land and fill with it enchantment, with mystery, before your church exterminated them and forced them to go into hiding. Your sword through my heart…a warrior’s death…please.”

The golden armoured king nodded solemnly, and Crannog lifted his hand to his collar and ripped his mailed shirt open with a grunt of effort, ignoring the blood beginning to pool at his mid-section.

Sebastian was able to make out that over his left breast, covered with grey hairs, there was a white painted triangular symbol, with a loop at each point.

Father’s low gasp drew his gaze back to him.

“The Triskel of the White Stag.” The golden king spoke, with eyes wide with recognition and reverential respect in his tone.

Crannog nodded, and spoke more between shallow gasps.

“This hill, was once part of my homeland. I wanted nothing… more than to avenge… my family, on the hill of my ancestors.”

Father’s eyes widened, and his blade in his right hand dipped. He hesitated, and spoke.

“My wife knows your tribe. Her clan fought alongside theirs on the day I first met her.”

Crannog’s eye narrowed as he comprehended this, his bearded lips opening and closing, before he spoke.

“My…my tribe lives.”

Father nodded.

“They thrive, Crannog of Clan White Stag.”

Crannog of the White Stag Clan gasped as Father’s words took full effect, but then his looks soured, as a memory from within hampered his on-set of joy and relief. More tears fell, as he bowed his head, and Sebastian had to strain his ears to hear his broken voice speak.

“Those boys…those girls…I killed them…for nothing…I thought… I didn’t want to, they reminded me of my own boys…I deserve to be in hell, with those demons…” Crannog moaned, and glanced back in the direction of the demons with their glowing, hungering baleful eyes in the gathering darkness.

Father’s face took on an expression of kingly fatherly pity, even as his jaw muscles hardened.

“I will send you to your family in the Under Land, and bring your body to home so that my wife may assist with your burial rites.”

Crannog looked up, his chest shaking as he failed to stem the tide of his own mournful weeping.

“I am ready.” He spoke with a waivering voice.

Father nodded, breathed in slowly as he readied himself for the deed that needed to be done, and lifting the point of his sword up, planting his left hand at the pommel to better power his thrust, he lunged.

With a final, metallic crunch, the king’s longsword impaled Crannog through the white rune on his heart, so hard that the point burst through the warrior’s back. Crannog winced, gasped briefly, whispered something that Sebastian could not hear, then fell back to the earth, his one eye staring up at the sky losing its murderous hellish sheen, and changing to a pale blue.

Father drew his left knee back, and kneeling down, he clasped his sword handle and bowed his head.

“May your gods grant you the peace…that my ancestors denied you in your previous life.”

Sebastian bowed his head. He was a murderer driven by immense grief and tragedy that no living man should ever experience.

_Rest in peace. May the families you destroyed in your quest for revenge also find peace, if they have not already, five hundred years ago._

“No!” Callidor’s furious warped voice bellowed from where he stood on the outcrop. The demon priest was glancing around with a frantic manic energy, and Father turned to look towards Callidor and call out.

“Your champion is defeated, Callidor! Release the captives you have taken, or suffer the same fate as your warrior! I will not be so merciful however, if you go back on your word!”

Sebastian saw an opening, where Oskar’s shield did not quite close him off to the battlefield, and he slipped past, running down the field to join with the king.

“Father, are you alright?”

Father turned back to him.

“Son, go back to the guards! I told you-”

Suddenly, there was the great commotion, coming from behind and beyond the hill amongst the ranks, and a series of loud, sonorous howls and what sounded like barking.

Then a huge furred black body leapt from behind the hill, soaring over the spears and helmets of the startled and exhausted men, and landed bodily on its four massive paws on the turf.

Sebastian’s fear that a giant wolf, possibly even the Ender Wolf himself had come, but when the auburn brown eyes turned and met his, and the huge beast, as tall as Father standing up and larger than a bear, Sebastian’s heart lurched with a familiar, affectionate recognition. Black of fur on most of his lupine body, yet white on his belly and his strong legs and up the centre of his lean, strong face.

“Pos! What the hell are you doing here!”

“Woo-woo woo!” Pos, the Sheppenvulf mixed by the meeting of a great black vulf and possibly a very brave huskerhound, barked his greeting and trotted up to him, and all of Sebastian’s face was blotted out by a huge wet black nose snuffling and nuzzling his own forehead. Sebastian made a noise of disgust as he wiped his grimy face, and saw the great hound turn and sniff the king the same way. Father tried to hide his smile as he gently pushed the huge snout away, which was three times as long with jaws large enough to swallow a man’s head whole.

“A sheppenvulf!” Sebastian heard the shrill rattling cry of fear from one of the imps. “The king has slain our champion and now they mean to hunt us and eat us up with their great hounds of war! We’re doomed!”

And with that, the feeble line of discipline that was held amidst the rabble of hellish imps was broken, and turning their forked tails and goat-like legs, they hurried and began to scramble, squealing and wailing as they desperately scrabbled up the hill to retreat to the cliff, likely to where their master summoned them through a portal.

“Retreat! Retreat!”

The men behind him saw this sight as a balm to all their troubles, and they lifted their arms and hands to the air, shaking them in a great cry of jubilation and victory.

“Hooray! Back to the pit with you, dogs!”

“Scurry back to your master’s skirts, you little devils!”

Even Father seemed to relax, his shoulders relaxing as if finally he had released a great weight that he was carrying in. With a grateful, bittersweet smile on his lips, he turned towards the Sheppenvulf before him.

“He must have followed you all the way here…” Father spoke to Sebastian as his gauntlet lifted to stroke the side of the great vulf cross’s head. The hound dipped his head and nestled his head against the touch.

“Maybe Mother had a dream about sending him as well?” Sebastian suggested in a half-hearted jest.

“This is no place for a loyal hound or a vulf for that matter.” Father insisted. He looked up again at Callidor as did Sebastian.

The priest was irate, looking down here and there and pointing and shrieking down at his minions as they continued to scurry away up the hill, the army’s last remaining brute trying and failing to scramble up the steep bank with its immense bulk working against it.

“Curse you! Curse you, spawns of the pit! Fight! Turn back and hold your ground! Hold your- no! I forbid it! I am the arch-priest and you are a disgrace to Astalloth’s forces! Stop! Stop!”

Father stepped forward, and, waiting for the moment Callidor had stopped screaming his warped throat hoarse at his own retreating men who carried on heedless to his intstructions, shouted as loud and as clear as he could manage.

“It appears you have yet to place your house in order as well, Archpriest. Now if you do not mind, I await your captives, or my vulf here will feast on demon flesh tonight!”

Callidor lifted his free thin hand and swiped at him, as if to wipe Father away from his sight.

“Fie on you, Longland king!” The veil covered priest turned towards the guards holding the prisoners. From what Sebastian could see, the guards were beginning to grow restless, glancing at the retreating line of demons and at Callidor for instruction. The prisoners of varying ilk and race, held by the chains being clutched by their imposing black-armoured captors, were anxiously glancing around and at each other. Whispering words of desperate hope perhaps.

Callidor turned back to the king, and even in the fading light of day, Sebastian could see the gut-churning sight of him baring his yellow decaying fangs at them both.

“You can have most of your prisoners, but the children will make for great spies and entertainment for my lord’s generals!”

He span towards the guards and signalled one of the hulking guards.

“Take them!”

Almost at once, the black-armoured horned guard lunged into action, grabbing his line of prisoners, a group of sack-dressed children, bound by one line of chains through their cuffs and pulling them as hard as he could. There was a great outcry of screams from the prisoners, as the other guards shoved them to the ground and let go of the chains, not bothering to release them or unbind them as they made their retreat.

The guard who held the children dragged them to an approaching horse, with a hideous appearance. Its body was rotten and made of strips of flesh and patches of glowing, burning red embers, but its head was missing all of its flesh, save for a black eye with a glowing red pupil. The guard mounted the undead hell-horse and kicked at the heels with its goat-like hooves. The horse turned and bolted, carrying the rider, and dragging the children behind him.

“The children…” Father gasped, stunned at the sheer cruelty displayed before him.

_No…_

Sebastian shook his head.

_NO! I won’t allow it!_

He turned to Pos.

“Pos! Ride!”

The huge sheppevulf turned to him and barked once, before turning and offering his left furry flank towards him before kneeling down to his haunches, low enough for Sebastian to jump on. Sebastian ran up to the vulf, making sure his sword was still in his scabbard.

“Sebastian, what are you doing!” Father shouted as Sebastian clambered up, straddling the barrel-like body of Pos’s ribcage and grabbing two prominent tufts of fur. He set his heels to the vulf’s sides above his hips.

“I’m getting those kids back! Feel free to grab a horse from the cavalry and join me! Ha!”

Sebastian kicked at the sides, and with a low, haunting howl to the cloudy skies, Pos reared up and began to gallop.

The wind brushed past Sebastian’s locks, the cool air of the evening brushing against his face as Pos growled and raced up towards the hill. He seemed to not need any direction to bound towards the hill, almost as if he knew where Sebastian wanted to go.

Pos reached the base of the steep grassy climb at the rim of the hill that had been turned into a blood bowl and leapt upward, pawing at the grass as he clawed his way up the hill. In six bounds Sebastian was soon overlooking the prisoners, some holding out their cuffed hands towards him to release them, and other families knelt in the dirt, wailing in the direction of the guard who had dragged the children off. Sebastian had thought that whole families had been chained together, but that could not have been further from the truth. They had begun their designation of their slaves immediately after their capture.

“Ha, Pos!”

Pos spurred into movement, sniffing the ground briefly before looking up, barking once and then taking off.

Sebastian wanted many things to come of today. He wanted to atone for his foolhardiness and brashness nearly decimating his own band of reinforcements in his glory-filled charge. He wanted also to slay Callidor, and rid the Circle of Lust and its villainous cabal of one of its most foulest allies, and he wanted to win glory for the Kingdom of Longland, and return to Rochlann Castle with more tales of honour and pride to assuage the songs of mourning that followed the wake of so a bloody battle.

But all that would pale in comparison to the burden of failure if Sebastian let these small children be taken by the outriders of Hell, to be condemned as the lowliest servants of the lowest forms of base villainy in the ranks of Astalloth’s council, endeavoured to the fulfilment of their most depraved vices.

He would save the children. If any true victory would come of today, it would be the safeguarding of the innocent from the forces of evil. And that, as a prince, was the finest initiative in Sebastian’s belief.


	5. Clifftop Battle

The line of retreating demons was not far off, a grim cabal of twisted forms limping and bounding away from the frontline as fast as their limbs and hooves could carry them. Some turned and saw him, hearing the panting and the great footfalls of Pos’s paws in the turf as he rapidly approached them. They screeched and ducked aside, fear overruling their notorious bloodlust as they cowered before him.

The line parted and Pos bounded through, snapping with ragged snarls at the behinds and faces of any demons he deemed to be too close. Sebastian had the room and time he needed to identify the guard dragging the children, and sure enough he found him, raising a stip of charred leather to the flank and rump of his undead steed, far ahead of the retreating line.

Four, no, six small bodies were being dragged through the grass like bait for dangerous game. Some were squealing at the top of their lungs for their parents. The rest were to Sebastian’s rapidly increasing alarm, deathly silent.

Sebastian reached to his left and drew his longsword, the black blood of demons already drying on the blade.

“Get me closer!” He roared, clutching the centre of Pos’s mane of fur with all his strength while holding his sword up in the air.

“Roo!”

Sebastian leant forward as Pos picked up speed, the wind now whistling furiously past his ears. Vulves could outrun horses on any terrain and in any weather, and Pos was one of the fastest there was.

“Closer!”

The last of the children being dragged drew closer. It was a black haired girl, no older than six or seven, and she was being dragged on her back. Sebastian rose his sword and with a quick muttered prayer that the holy water would undo the demonic spells wrought in the chains to help his steel undo iron, he swung down above the girl’s hands. With a bright flash and a heavy clanging sound, the chain resisted, then gave under the force of the strike. The girl disappeared far behind him and Sebastian could move on to the next one. He hoped at least the retreating demons would not notice, much less accidentally step on the girl as she lay on the grass.

_Too late to go back now! Press on! Free the others!_

And press on he did. Sebastian spurred Pos on, and eventually he caught up to a boy, black of skin with short, curled hair. He was still, appearing almost lifeless as he was being dragged along with the length of chain that attached his predecessor across the wet grass. Another stroke of his blessed sword freed the child.

With another child freed, he pressed on, spinning his sword in his hand, ready to swing down again. Another screaming blonde elf chid was cut free, rolling into the grass behind him. A dwarf child with a shock of red hair on his head, small but stocky was writhing in his chains that bound him by the hands above the head, and screamed when he saw Pos’s enormous head looming over him with his lolling tongue.

“Hold on!” Sebastian yelled and swung again, cutting the boy free with a clank of steel cutting through the black iron chain.

_Two more to go!_

“I’m coming!” Sebastian yelled out to the last two children, who were indeed awake and screaming and crying at the top of their lungs. “Hold on!”

One more swing cut a black haired grey-skinned dark elf child from the chains, and Sebastian glimpsed the blood on his legs. Gritting his teeth, he pushed on, and found the last one with his head dangerously close to the kicking red hooves of the hell-horse, his pale face red as he bawled and rolled helplessly onto his front and then his back again, his sack clothes barely providing the minimal protection from his skin being chafed off by being dragged along the ground. His legs too had scrapes and blood along their calves and feet.

Sebastian’s sword rose and swung down one last time, cutting the child free.

_Please, please only have wounds that will heal. Please be too small for the retreating demons to notice. Please let Father’s cavalry reach them in time!_

Sebastian debated whether to press on, or to stop Pos and turn back to pick up the children, but the hell guard made that choice for him, turning his red-eyed gaze towards him. His face concealing helm, that allowed his curled horns to poke out the sides above his ears, left his rotting, decaying mouth intact, with barely any lips to conceal its yellow fangs. They opened and screamed as the guard saw that his prizes had been stolen, before his wild crimson gaze fell on him.

“Torss Shlakaaa!” He cursed. He lifted its right hand from the frayed reins he clutched and within seconds a beam of fire the length of a spear crackled into existence. Trailing ash for brief moment with the smell of acrid sulphur in the air, the guard wielded his conjured halberd, a terrible weapon to gut and impale and rip and hack apart, with a crudely hammered and forged finish to its blade, decorated with crude, devilic runes, the guard swung wildly to its left at Sebastian’s head. Sebastian veered Pos away, staying to the left side where his sword-hand would have the best range of movement.

“A demon lancer!” Sebastian cursed aloud. “Leave it to me to keep picking the toughest enemies!”

“Torrsh Shlai! Raahuud! Bacchatt Pincey!” The lancer spat, and spurred his steed to bank him closer to Sebastian. With another swing, the hell guard brought his halberd’s axe blade sweeping towards Sebastian’s neck. Only his sword brought up in time stopped the demon from decapitating him or shearing the top half of his skull off his jaw. Sebastian leaned forward and shoved the halberd away, his tricep and chest muscles straining from the effort.

“Torred fuchai!”

The lancer spat more of its obscene dialect, his voice sounding as if its vocal cords were being shredded by a flail. It pulled his steed, its skeletal head snorting as its wild black and red pupil rolled in its skull. Its mouth, with its long incisors and thick molars, opened and snapped at a worryingly large angle. Then the lancer came in again, swinging its halberd up high to bring it crashing down on Sebastian’s head. Sebastian cried out and swung his sword backward, deflecting the strike as far away from himself and Pos’s back as he could. The poorer range the lancer had as a result of its swing being made from the opposite side of its body enabled Sebastian to parry the huge blade away.

“Buresh buurkai!” The lancer cursed as it tried to right itself, veering away to steady its blade, this time tucking it under its shoulder. Sebastian knew what was coming next, and he exhaled sharply to prepare himself.

The lancer began to flank him again. “Vissh, dachrai! Ruchaid!” With one more murderous curse, the guard thrust the speared tip of his halberdier, living up to its name as a lancer. Sebastian swung his sword in front of him, parrying the barbed uneven blade away from his neck.

Then the horse lowered its head, and with one wailing screech, opened its buck-toothed jaws to snap at Pos’s head. Pos saw it coming luckily, and whipped his shaggy head out of the snapping beast’s reach. Then with the steed’s skull in range, Pos’s own jaws lunged forward and bit hard into the exposed bone, crunching into it with fangs that could pierce bone. The steed wailed like an abyss dwelling fiend, still feeling pain despite having no flesh to tear.

They remained in this stalemate for seconds, with Sebastian blocking the halberd to his throat and Pos biting into the steed’s skull. Then the lancer reached to his left side and drew a curved dagger that was like a bestial talon. Sebastian moved. He risked being dismounted by grabbing the point of the spear with his left gauntlet, pushing the axe and spear point away, before lifting his sword and swinging down on the haft of the halberd. The black handle broke, and Sebastian threw the bladed half that was beginning to disintegrate away, grabbed Pos’s furry shoulder to stabilise himself and swung back at the lancer bearing down on him with the taloned dagger.

His sword cut into the lancer’s breastplate and with a flash of light and black blood, Sebastian’s longsword cleaved through the entire left side of the demon rider’s chest. The lancer bellowed one last hoarse cry of agony at the top of its ravaged lungs, before it leaned back and tumbled painfully to the grass behind it. Pos still held the hell-horse’s skull in his vice-like jaws, so Sebastian sent it the way of its rider, with one sure stroke of his blade through the skeletal hellish steed’s neck, beheading it below the skull. Pos let go of the skull as the head and the body crashed into the ground, tumbling headless stump-over-heels into the grass.

“Woo woo!” barked Pos.

“Damn right, boy! Good job!” Sebastian appraised.

Suddenly, a roar of noise, an multitude of voices and the thunder of hooves sounded behind Sebastian, and he shouted to halt the vulfhound.

“Whoa boy!” Sebastian risked a look behind him, his armour scraping as he managed to twist around to see the commotion.

In the distance, across the many leagues he had rode chasing the lancer, he saw a crowd of knights, mounted on destriers and coursers, decorated with fine coats over their majestic strong bodies. They were milling around the demon forces on the outside, and Sebastian felt grim satisfaction and relief as he realised that the retreating imps had been overtaken by the cavalry and were being cut down by the knights. The white-skull of the burned imp brute could still be seen, staggering around and bellowing at the swarm of knights as it swung its club ineffectively at the air. Soon it would likely be run through with a hundred lances and spears in its great swaggering body.

“Looks like the cavalry finally caught up!” He said to Pos, who blinked and patted happily as he reached down to stroke his huge head.

Some of the children he had saved were standing up, and one of the circling knight’s helmets turned as he saw them. He pointed his gauntlet at them and spoke to his brothers-in-arms, who heard and saw as well. Soon a group of them rode up to each one of the children, leaning down with their arms to scoop up the children that stood, and dismounted to lift up the motionless ones.

“Our work here is done, boy.” Sebastian spoke with relief.

“Mwrmm.” Pos agreed.

Sebastian turned towards the cliff, as a reddish light began to fall on him. The sun had broken through the pale clouds and was bathing the cliffs of the Brekan Hills in a setting red. A fitting end to a day filled with so much bloodshed.

Sebastian peered to the far edge of the cliff. To his surprise, there were bodies moving there. One body carried a red beacon of light above his head. The light of a red gem filled with magic.

_Callidor! He must be trying to conjure a portal to escape to the Circle of Lust!_

Sebastian thought of the children, of the wretched attempt by his minions to make off with them to use as slaves or worse. He thought of the broken barbarian revenant, a condemned man damned and goaded into revenge by Callidor’s twisted sorcery.

And he made his decision. Today would be a total victory, not a near-one. Callidor must never again be allowed to plot another attack or excursion in his father’s land.

“The sun is setting on the imp soldiers of Astalloth.” He said to his vulfhound. “Perhaps it should set on Callidor as well! On, boy!”

Pos growled, his mind at one with him, or at least sensing his desire for further demon bloodshed. He took off and bounded towards the edge of the cliff where Callidor and his comrades, likely his guard and his robed peons as they hurried to their task of securing their master’s escape.

_This time, Callidor dies!_

The mortal fear of overwhelming strength, a mass of darkness arraigned before him arose in his heart. No mortal would simply challenge a demon of any rank to single combat, and the power that demonic priests possessed was often said to greater than any rogue mage or sorcerer. They had the power to steal souls, cripple resolves, and corrupt the richest of lands and life with their foul, hateful, god-hating magic.

But Sebastian loved all that was good in his life, and all his life he was raised by his king father and queen mother to spurn and abhor evil, immorality and wicked things, and chase them and do away with them on all fronts, from the intrigues of the court, to enemies in battle and to the cowardly wretched voices of doubt and fear in his heart. He would fight Callidor and kill him today, even if it cost him his life. One lowly priest within the ranks of Astalloth may not seem a grand victory, but it would be a noble one nonetheless.

Pos’s head rose and fell before him as he bounded, placing all his strength in his legs to carry rider and hound towards the priest. Pos would have demon blood, his desire fuelled by an evolved, ingrained hatred of the enemy of life and all Athkind.

Ahead, two curved spires of stone, ripped from the earth by the peon’s crude sorcery, formed to summon a rudimentary archway. As he drew closer, Sebastian could see the peons, grey hooded figures, stooped and lowly, scurried around the taller, familiar figure with a glowing crystal staff that was Callidor. Watched by the four remaining honour guards in their imposing dark and spiked armour, Callidor’s underlings hurried to their task. The peon’s magic was weak, but effective if combined, as they used tendrils of demonic energy, siphoned from their mutually shared fear of failing their archpriest and the one he served, to pull up dirt-dripping rocks from the earth. Their curses struck like bolts of lightning into the ground, and waving their slim bony arms and hands in bizarre incantations, they lifted their materials to join with the arches, curving up to take shape like two rounded horns of unequal length.

“Callidor!” Sebastian roared at the top of his lungs. Pos growled and barked with a savage fury as his rage took hold of his canine spirit.

Callidor spun, yards away, his robes flowing about him as he turned to behold his pursuer. Upon seeing him, he stumbled back, his lips peeling back in a hideous grimace of shock.

“You!” His hoarse, warped voice spat the word like a curse.

Sebastian pulled at the scruff of fur he held in his left hand to slow Pos’s charge into a stalking prowl. The vulfhound’s ears were pulled back, and his growls rumbled through Sebastian’s legs, sending a thrill of fear and equally sized anger in his chest. One kick of his spurs would send the hound into a charge that had been a shared terror of many soldier who feared fighting such imposing, powerfully built hounds in battle.

“You won’t get away this time, Callidor!” Sebastian readied his sword arm with a roll of his shoulder, feeling his muscles quiver with anticipation for one last effort to rend each and every demon’s head from their shoulders.

Callidor’s head glanced behind him, his veiled eyes searching for what Sebastian knew to be none other than the guard dragging a group of poorly dressed, badly beaten children by the chain on his undead horse.

“Th…the children… how…?!”

Pos stalked closer, and Sebastian spun his sword around in his grip, its metallic sheen stained with the black blood of the undead steed and its rider.

“Your slaves are free and forever beyond your grasp!”

Callidor appeared to quail at his words, once realisation set in. Sebastian was close enough now to see that his fingers were twitching and his lip trembling, before his hand formed into a shaking fist and his lips beared his yellow and black fangs with malice and retribution in their gaze.

“Damn you…mortal scum.”

With a flurry of his robes, he turned on his peons frantically digging with their magic.

“Hurry! Move faster or I will have your guts pulled through your mouth!” He snapped at them.

He turned to the tall guards flanking him, each one armed with a cruelly fashioned black iron halberd, spear and axe woven into Herupia’s most horrific weapon yet.

“You! All four of you! Kill him and the dog! Now! Buy me time with your lives!” He pointed at him with his glowing crystal.

The horned guards, imps of imposing physique and stature, taller than Sebastian, rolled their shoulders and cracked their neck, growling low as they strode past their charge to face Sebastian and Pos. As they began to spread out, Sebastian saw one of the peons approach Callidor, bowing even lower with its stooped head, its features obscured by its tattered, poorly woven hood. Callidor turned to look down disdainfully at the underling.

“What? What?” He spat.

“Sire…the portal…” The peon bowed and scraped in a wormy voice, wracked by some foul malady in its tone, as it gestured with its hand, thinner and more skeletal than even Callidor’s. Sebastian glanced behind the two figures to see that two of the peons had abandoned their building of the arch to gesture at the empty space, while the remaining two strained to lift the last remaining parts to complete the structure.

At first, nothing existed in the archway, before a small, orange light, murky and bright like an dying ember, manifested in the very centre, creating a new distant red sun in the sky beyond the archway. Then it grew, twisting and forming and burning brighter like a flame devouring air and string on a candle.

 _They’ve begun conjuring the portal!_ Sebastian’s eyes widened as he realised what was about to unfold.

“Continue the incantation!” Callidor snarled with an insistent stomp of his staff in the earth, before turning and pointing at Sebastian while addressing the advancing guards.

“Bring me his head!”

The guards joined their hands to the fore of their staffs that held their gruesome blades, with spears to stab into his breastplate and blades to rend his limbs and head from his shoulders. Or they’d rip his armour off and thrust one into his guts, deep enough to punch through his belly and then twist, ripping out his very guts.

Sebastian placed both hands on Pos’s back and swung his right leg over to the left behind him, dismounting from the Vulfhound.

“You take two, I’ll take two.” He ordered his hound. “Don’t let one sneak up on you!”

“Woo!” Pos replied, although Sebastian wasn’t fully sure if he understood his words. Sebastian gripped his sword handle harder in his gauntlets, and advanced towards the taller guards striding towards him.

 _Advance without fear towards taller or more imposing foes. Half the battle is fought by bravery and courage alone._ Davyth’s words echoed in his mind as the horned, black armoured imps strode closer. Their legs were more human like in shape than the rest of their imp counterparts, creating the impression that these were simply men with curved ram horns on the sides of their heads, poking out from the sides of their helms.

“Moshtu Hallee…” The one to the centre of the group and the closest of the four spoke. Sebastian opened his arms wide as a challenge.

“Here! Come on, two of you!”

“Raagghh!” The guard growled under his face-shielding helm and thrust low with his halberd. Sebastian side-stepped out of the way, moving backwards and glancing at the guard to his left. He was coming on to, which left the other two to Pos’s jaws.

_Good._

“Dachrai!” The one on the left charged forward, angling the spearpoint of his halberd low. Sebastian gripped his longsword, ready to meet him. The barbed point came and Sebastian slapped it aside with his blade, before swiping at the guard’s arm to discourage it from a possible tackle. A quick glance saw the long shaft of the halberd from the guard on the right cutting through the air to cut into his unguarded head. Sebastian parried it away with a crescent arc of his sword, with a grating kiss of steel on iron covered wood. Right Guard stumbled away.

Left Guard came at him with a low swing at his waist, and when Sebastian deflected it, swung the blunt staff end towards his left side. Sebastian stepped back as the guard struck at his right and left, trying to overwhelm him with both ends of its halberd like a staff. He struggled to keep an eye on Right Guard, who was being cautious, watching the fight while keeping a steady pace.

_Can’t let him get behind me!_

Left Guard’s next staff strike battered his sword away, and then thrust into his breastplate, trying to knock him down. Sebastian stumbled, his boots scrambling to keep his footing, and Right Guard saw his opening. Sebastian saw the taller figure advance on him, its black crude armour plates scraping together as it lifted its sinewy arms, its upper and lower limbs exposed between the elbow, its pauldron and its gauntlets, to thrust at his head. Sebastian spun his own sword and caught it below the blade, pushing it forward to misdirect its aim.

Then Left decided to take another swipe, this time lifting its halberd high to stove in his head. Sebastian’s decision came to him in milliseconds. He angled his sword slightly back so that the impact wouldn’t shatter his wrist, grabbed the spear point of the halberd with his free hand, and pushed up, bracing for the pact. Right Guard’s halberd caught the oncoming blade of its comrade, and when Right made the mistake of trying to wrench his blade free, the axe blade snagged onto the other blade, and they held.

Sebastian kept his grip on the spear-tip of Right Guard as the two demons glanced at each other in the brief moment of confusion.

 _A free hand is a weapon in its own right._ Davyth’s lilting Cymland voice echoed in his mind again. The mail in his gauntlet served as adequate protection from the blade’s coarse and sharp edge. With the halberds trapped, Sebastian acted. Pulling the spear tip down, Sebastian lifted his sword, winding it up and down in a circular arc and swung down hard on Right Guard’s halberd bellow the iron clasp that fastened the head to the pole. The wood gave after one solid, hard strike, and the guard now held a pike with a splintered head. Sebastian didn’t give it a moment to recover. He lifted his blade and swung his blade hard at the right side of the imp guard’s horned head.

The imp’s right horn shattered and sparks flew from its visored helm as it bellowed and spun away, clutching at the right side of its face. The pressure keeping Left Guard’s halberd locked with Right Guard’s vanished, and Left acted on it, pulling back in an attempt to overbalance him then thrusting at his sternum. Sebastian stepped forward to stop himself being pulled forward, keeping his footing, and when the thrust came, Sebastian kept the shattered axe-head lodged with to Left’s halberd, pulling it to his left side while letting himself side-step within range of the guard’s now vulnerable left side. There was no space to swing, but that didn’t matter. Sebastian punched forward with the handguard of his sword, straight into the eye-hole gap in the imp guard’s visor.

The guard’s muffled roar of pain sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through Sebastian’s veins, and with one quick check to tell him that Right Guard had recovered, he wasted no time. He ripped his sword and its handle-guard away from the guard’s ruined left eye. Then with his left foot he kicked up hard, connecting his greave-covered shin into the cod-piece of Left guard with a gruesome metallic, fleshy crunch. The guard’s howls diminished to a stifled whimper, and it felt to its knees, its arms holding its halberd lowering. Sebastian let go of the axe-head, stepping to dodge the guard’s weak retaliatory swipe at his knees. Then with one swipe, he carved the axe-head of the halberd from its pole, and with a right swing and a yell, he sliced clean through the guard’s neck. The guard’s body spun where it lay on its knees, and collapsed to the ground, its horned head tumbling from its shoulders.

Then Right came at him, angling low to charge straight at him with its right shoulder lowered. Sebastian turned with his sword to try and run him through but too late. The air rushed out of his lungs as the guard’s shattered horn and shoulder slammed into his breastplate hard and his head soon struck the hard, wet floor. Briefly seeing stars, Sebastian forced himself to stay awake as he saw the guard with now one horn and one eye looming over him. Sebastian reacted on instinct, reaching with his left hand to catch the guard’s arm at the wrist before it tried to work its splintered pole into the gap under his breastplate, trying to stab him in the ribcage.

Sebastian tried to lift his sword, his mouth tasting blood from where his teeth cut his lip, and the guard’s left hand reached down and seized his sword-arm at the wrist, pinning it down with terrifying strength. The pressure in his left arm grew as the guard tried to work its rudimentary pike into his side. Panic arose in Sebastian’s heart, the fear of being pinned and trapped under the guard’s superior bulk and strength very soon becoming certain. If he didn’t move, he would be stuck like a trapped pig.

Sebastian grit his teeth, growling to match the snarling demon guard and its one remaining left eye glaring with fiery malice into his very soul as it leant towards him. Then he planted his feet on the ground, and with all the effort he could summon, he thrust up and to the left side, pushing the guard off balance. Its mistake was easing its weight off his hips, and soon, Sebastian had the guard briefly pinned on his back, letting go of his own sword. He twisted his sword-arm free of its grip, and when the guard tried to swipe at his neck, Sebastian ducked back, then pressed and pinned its left arm to its chest with his hand, then his own knees, trapping the limb.

There was still the guard’s sword arm holding the ruined stump like a stake. Sebastian lifted his free right hand and struck the inside of the demon’s right elbow, turning the arm so that it was above its body. The point of the ruined halberd staff slid harmlessly across his breastplate and Sebastian struck again, this time leaning with all his weight into the demon’s right arm. Grunting and grimacing with effort, feeling the veins bulge from his temple, Sebastian leant down on the demon’s wrist, now forcing the point down towards the guard’s unprotected neck.

There was a brief moment of resistance, before Sebastian roared, furious at the realisation that he nearly suffered a helpless end, and struck the bottom of the demon’s hand, pummelling the end of the staff that the demon must have snapped off to make it easier to wield. The improvised stake punched down, puncturing into the guard’s neck. The guard’s growls ended into a wet, gargling choking noise, as the wooden point cut into its airways and throat. Sebastian yelled and punched down again, feeling the point crunch through cartilage, bone and muscle. Black blood spattered on his face as the last of the demon’s resistance diminished, and its arm slackened, before falling away to slam lifelessly onto the ground.

Sebastian panted as his strength left him in his relief, leaning over the guard he had just killed, before wiping the blood from his face and cheek with the back of his left gauntlet. A series of snaps and growls drew his attention to observe Pos and his struggle with the two remaining guards.

Sebastian saw only the furry, black and white bulk of the vulfhound, bounding safely out of reach of the guard’s halberds. The great vulfhound crouched on his haunches, strong lean muscle coiled to pounce and leap and pin with his furry tail leant out to balance itself. The guards jabbed and swung at his face, while trying to catch his front paws. One tried to flank him on his right, but Pos danced out of the way and snapped at him with his jaws twice, causing the guard to stumble back. The guards were hesitant, neither of them willing to venture too close, and probably wishing they were armed with crossbows instead of halberds.

Then the one on its left bent its horned head low, risking all to go for the kill. It lunged forward, charging in a pike rush intending to impale the vulfhound. Pos leapt aside, the spear tip missing his large, thick muscled and narrow jawed skull, and snapped at the halberd below the axe-head. With one bite as if he were playing with a stick, Pos twisted his head and snapped the head from its staff, discarding it with a toss of his head.

The guard glanced at the ruin of its halberd, before Pos bounded towards him, leaping in one bound to pounce on him. Pinned under one huge blunt clawed paw, the guard had only a moment to let out a short hoarse scream before Pos’s jaws descended and closed on its helm and neck. With a savage muffled growl, Pos stepped off the guard as it flailed underneath and began to shake, biting hard enough to crush the guard’s helmet like cheap tin.

Seb smiled with grim satisfaction as the vulfhound went to his bloody work, soon engrossed in his shaking that the entire body of the guard was lifted, its legs and arms shaking like a rag-doll as its head remained attached on its broken neck. Then Seb saw the other guard, running at Pos’s right flank with his halberd held low.

“Pos, watch out!” Seb screamed, fear clenching his gut and opening a pit in his stomach in horror. Pos’s eyes opened, and turned to their left in time to see the guard. His huge lean body turned to dodge, but the guard’s spear-tip struck home. Pos’s body shook from the impact and his brief yelp of pain was the sound of Sebastian’s worst nightmares.

The blow must have been glancing however, as Pos spun and swung the guard’s body in his mouth to his right with break-neck speed, slamming his kill into the right side of the guard with a bodily clanking sound. Seb could only see the back of Pos, but he could also see the guard who had been struck by the dead body of his own comrade hitting the floor, his halberd tumbling out of his grasp.

The guard rolled from the impact, before coming to rest on his front. Pos stalked towards him, growling low, bearing his fangs with canines twice the size of Sebastian’s hand, the hairs on his neck bristling like a mottled white and black mane. The guard propped himself on his elbows, shaking his helm, before freezing like a frightened rabbit at the vulfhound’s growls. He turned slowly to behold the vulfhound stalking towards him, then looked about for his weapon. Seb’s eyes followed his vision to see the halberd hidden under the body of its mangled comrade.

The guard began to crawl, one step, then another, towards the halberd. It got far enough to reach its right hand to brush the pole with its fingers, before Pos lunged. The guard turned, trying to kick at him with its long legs, but Pos’s jaws missed the kicking boots and latched onto the midsection of the guard. The guard threw back its hound and howled in pure agony, as Pos’s fangs rent the black iron armour of its breastplate and bit like a metal bear trap into its own guts.

The guard’s howls soon reached a hideous peal in its volume as Pos began to shake, dragging the guard’s body across the ground, side to side. The guard hammered futilely at the vulf’s snout, but Pos’s shaking only intensified, and the wailing demon was ploughed through the coarse, muddy earth.

Then Pos let go, but only to adjust his grip and bite down again, this time his jaws fixing on the front and back of the guard’s torso. Then with a bestial snarl, Pos bit down hard and began to shake. The guard continued to wail and howl, before a sickening crunch was heard, bone and metal cracking under the vulfhound’s jaws. Its legs suddenly went limp, and with a final shake, Pos ripped the demon into two bloody pieces.

Its legs flew from its torso and the upper body was flung from Pos’s mouth to the ground. Landing on its back, a trail of pale grey gizzards where its legs used to be, the guard limply pushed itself up to see the vulfhound’s face advancing towards him.

Pos spared the demon no mercy. He lunged again and bit into the demon’s guts. The demon guard feebly clutched at the hound’s nose, before its arms fell limp, and its horned head collapsed on the ground. Pos growled and began to champ at the innards, black gore staining his white snout as he devoured his fresh kill, satisfied at his next victory.

Sebastian gasped in relief.

“Good dog.” He appraised his hound.

“Incompetents!” Callidor’s warped voice cursed behind him, and Sebastian spun about to face the demon priest. He flexed his hands and upon looking down and seeing his gauntlets clutch at nothing but air, he remembered that he had dropped his sword in the tussle with the guard who tackled him.

He glanced back up at Callidor. Callidor had seen it too, and his rotting lips peeled back under his veil into a sickening grimace. He then appeared to glance behind him, to the battle raging between the knights and the army against the faltering demon forces. The low, bellowing roar of the brute resounded across the mountains like a enraged bullock.

“Tell me, boy, how fast can you retrieve your sword…” Callidor lifted his left, long-nailed hand, beginning to trace an arcane symbol in the air, filled with five demonic points. “…before you have to fare against the last of my brutes!”

_Wait, he cannot seriously be attempting to…_

But he was. Tracing a pentagram that cascaded sparks of hellish flame like a flint striking stone, Callidor closed his hands, then threw the demonic symbol into the air. The circle surrounding the points were covered with twisted, glowing runes with symbols that Sebastian dared not to try and discern, for fear that their meaning would blacken his very soul.

The symbol rotated as it was flung into the air, until it stood over twenty feet above them. Then with another shower of sparks cascading from the points, the rune turned transparent, then blotted out the sky between its lines with a crimson fiery hue. Then, the red haze disappeared, but this time there was the sight of knights on their horses, his knights, rearing and hacking and thrusting with their swords, and slivers of blood and teeming bodies of screaming demons, and Sebastian tried to see but there was a black, charred bulky mass in the centre of the great pentagram obscuring the view of the battle,-

And then, the last remaining brute of Callidor’s legion fell through the rune, dropped through a portal that had been opened under its hoofed feet. Sebastian staggered back, feeling its enormous feet shake the ground through the soles of his boots, mentally adjusting to the size of the second brute to face him as it too tried to right itself. Like its predecessor, its body was a burned black and brown shape, with mottled lesions and veins of magma orange scoring its grotesque body. All save its chalk-bone white skull above its squat neck was a body blackened by the fires of hell. In its right hand, it still held its club, and arrows and broken spears jutted from its portly, muscular body. Gashes and rakes and broken ax-heads decorated its bulky form, around its double jointed legs and its belly, the only areas that the knights were able to reach. The numerous scars lessened around its midrim and its shoulders, though its lower arms bore wounds that bled orange and black ichor from its rent skin.

In its left hand, it held a screaming, fully armoured knight. The man was holding a straight bladed dagger, and the grey armoured soldier was flailing and kicking in the brute’s grip, squirming like a tortoise in the brute’s clutches. The brute snorted, its yellow eyes blinking as its slow mind attempted to adjust to its sudden change of surroundings. One moment it was fighting to the death against a circle of screaming, cursing knights and pikemen, the next it had been plucked from its surroundings and dropped a good half a mile away.

“Kratt! Nele For ku, vashla et broka dur pincey!” Callidor barked, causing the horned head of the brute to perk up and turn to address its master with an almost vacant stare ignoring the knight . Sebastian was convinced that brutes made even ogres look intelligent.

“Kill the prince,” Callidor added further instructions in longlish. “And I will persuade our lord to reward you with the best succubuses that he can spare from his harem!”

“Norudu….Kratt, nu sheve dar Callidor, ju broka pincey!” Kratt, if Callidor’s address was to be believed, acknowledged his master’s instruction, and turned to him with a low rumbling growl. It stood at is full height, still holding its club and price.

“Come on! Come on!” The knight was screaming, those words among others, as he was almost unintelligible under his head-concealing helm with a rounded frame and a visor folded down. He managed to get his dagger into a reverse grip and was trying to stab into the brute’s hand with frantic hammering blows of his arm. The brute took notice, but only after the third or so strike, looking down as if remembering it was holding the knight to begin with. The knight looked up at Kratt just as its lips peeled back to reveal those shear made of sharp bone, in place of fangs or teeth. Shearing, cutting fangs.

With a bellowing roar, Kratt lifted the knight to his mouth. The knights arms thrashed about and the arm wielding the dagger swung and struck wildly, as his screams grew even more muffled, once his upper body was engulfed inside the brute’s mouth. Sebastian turned away with a noise of revulsion and horror as the brute bit down. There was the sound of metal scraping against bone, followed immediately by the crunch of bone and flesh being severed under the blade-sharp plate teeth of the brute. Sebastian glanced up to see the brute rip the lower body away from the upper half still in its mouth, as easily as biting through mutton, and tossed the remainder away, the armoured lower half trailing blood as it fell and crashed in a heap on the ground.

Then with another bite of its jaws, Kratt bit down again, shearing the arms and more of the upper body into crudely pared armoured meet, then tossed it to its right. The knight’s mangled head and body, his arms hanging by the strips of flesh and ruined armoured holding them together, rolled onto the grass covered stony ground. Half of his head was mutilated, chewed off by the brute’s fangs. Bile rose in Sebastian’s mouth as he saw what he remembered to be Treffor’s dark eye staring back at him from behind the shattered visor plate, his disfigured face recognisable only by a scar on his nose that he got from a sparring match.

“God…”

“Reearrghhh!” Kratt wiped the gory remainder of the knight Treffor from his pale lips with the back of his free hand, gore staining his bone pale face, and began to lumber forward, his blood-stained iron club jostling in his hand as he adjusted his grip to prepare a crushing blow. Like the previous one, belonging to Torr, if Sebastian assumed correctly, it was another notched abomination of melted iron, hardened to be a coarse, rough, gnobbly weapon for crushing smaller foes and breaking the bones of larger enemies. It was sure to make short work of him, and Sebastian did not know if he had any remaining stamina to sidestep such a massive weapon.

“Damn it all…” Sebastian grit his teeth, as the wounded yet still standing brute began to close the gap. He traded glances between the brute and the ground around him, trying to find his sword.

And saw its silvery sheen and golden-embossed design upon the handle-guard and rounded pommel, right behind the brute’s hooved feet.

“Ah, shit…” Sebastian cursed. Not exactly fitting last words, but…

“Nee Tarhat, Pincey!” Kratt bellowed and raised his club up high with one gnarled paw with cracked grey nails.

“Wrrr Woo!” Pos’s bark was so loud it startled Sebastian, who was bracing himself to roll to the right, and yet his heart soared at the reminder that his vulfhound was here by his side. Sebastian turned to his right as the huge mass of black and white canine muscle bounded by his side and then leapt, his paws extended towards the brute’s throat. Kratt had time to widen his eyes and let his gore-stained lips open ajar before the vulfhound collided head-on with his chest. The impact was enough to send the giant demon reeling back two steps.

Then Pos’s jaws opened and worked around the exposed bone-painted neck of the demon, and Kratt flailed and howled into the sky as the vulf tore into his throat with unfailing zeal and bloodlust. Pos’s growling was bestial and savage, muffled by the demon’s flesh in his jaws. Kratt grabbed and clawed at the vulf’s back, but couldn’t find a hold. He tried to swipe him off with his club, but Pos shook his head and bit deeper, and Kratt’s roars grew more and more strangled. The brute’s eyes screamed shut as dark orange blood began to spurt and pour from his ravaged throat, and with another flail of its thick arms, he fell back on to his right side.

Pos leapt off the demon’s chest, and Kratt attempted to grab at his back, but Pos side-stepped the clumsily aimed paw, retreating slightly from the neck, only to lunge and latch onto the demon’s throat. Kratt’s railing cries of agony rang through the air, and he rolled onto his back, Pos resuming his place on the brute’s chest, biting and worrying at the thick neck, ripping into the cartilage and windpipe. Sebastian saw his sword under the kicking, flailing hooves, ran up to it, dodging a blood and dirt covered hoof, and retrieved it with a deft grab, its weight sending a shiver of comfort and relief up his arm, like a missing part of his limb had been restored.

Finally, when Kratt’s struggles began to subside, and his wails and bellowing screams faded to a rattling wet gargling noise, Pos pushed against Kratt’s chest, pulling with his neck, before ripping free, tearing out the brute’s throat and chewing the flesh in his jaws before gulping it down. His maw covered by even more gore, orange and black-tinged, he bent his head and resumed devouring his new kill.

“Enough!” Callidor roared, frustration and belligerent in his tone. Sebastian looked up at Callidor, and he could tell that the demon priest was seething, by his quivering arms and his fangs being bared like a wild dog’s.

Sebastian tightened his grip on his sword. Enough indeed. This ends now.

Sebastian pushed off and ran, willing one more surge of adrenaline and fury through his veins.

Callidor startled, perhaps surprised at how fast he could run in a full suit of plate armour. Sebastian thanked the elvanoe and dwarvaren smiths for forging a suit that was both resilient and light enough to not over encumber and exhaust him should he need to move quickly. Sweat still gathered on his brow to mingle with the flecks of dirt and blood. He spat a wad of bloody saliva from his mouth and readied his left hand to join at the base and pommel of his sword handle.

Callidor lowered his head, ready to do battle. He lifted and crossed his lean, bony arms, closing his dextrous hands into fists, then opened his arms, his billowing robe sleeves widening and folding along his body like the wings of a bat.

Sebastian cried out in surprise at a sudden burst of searing heat, erupting from behind him, and rolled forward on instinct, before turning around. He had to blink to adjust his eyes, for all he saw was searing yellow, crackling light. He stepped back to further take in the view and realised that there was a wall of fire, conjured around him.

No, not around him, in front of him! Cutting him off from the field, and from Pos. He could make out and hear Pos’s barking in distress. Sebastian looked about, desperately trying to find a way out.

Then a familiar crackling noise, barely audible above the hungry flames of the fire wall burning ceaselessly in front of him, made Sebastian turn. He rose his sword, with the flat side facing outward on instinct.

The impact of Callidor’s fireball nearly struck the sword into Sebastian’s face, but he ducked aside as the holy water and the blessings of his father served as a life-preserving ward, deflecting the fireball askance.

Callidor strode forward, his hooded crimson robes lined with black whipping around his arms and legs, his red crystal glowing a dangerously bright hue before he thrust it forward. Flames appeared, licking around the crystal before sprouting into shape and shooting forward like a flaming arrow.

Sebastian lowered and swung, batting the hellish spell away from his body. Callidor came on, firing off more spells at him, at his legs, then his arm, then at his head. Sebastian parried and deflected them all, feeling their searing heat warm his gauntlets, warp his right pauldron when one skimmed too close, and nearly cook the hair on his head.

“Why…won’t…you…die?!” Callidor cursed. Sebastian took the initiative, ducking another bolt of fire, delfecting another, and by the time Callidor realised he had stepped too close, it was too late. Sebastian advanced towards Callidor, the wind blowing through his hair, feeling his lungs with the smell of fire, sulphur and the cold mountain air, filling him with purpose and resolve. He swung his longsword up, connecting it to the staff just below where its black metal claws housed the glowing red crystal.

Callidor panicked and stumbled back, proffering the staff while shielding his face with his bony free hand. Sebastian’s sword cut through the staff and sheared the top of it clean off with a shower of red crackling sparks. Callidor staggered to a halt, before looking past his hand to examine his staff, then the red crystal humming and flickering from a brightly glowing gem to a dead, lifeless ruby on the ground by Sebastian’s boots.

Movement behind Callidor made Sebastian glance past, to see that the arch was now complete, and the crackling manifesting nimbus of crimson energy was growing larger, and larger. Soon it would be large enough to fill the entire arch, and Callidor’s portal would be completely open, for the priest to escape, or worse, to let something else through.

Sebastian didn’t want to wait to find out Callidor’s next scheme. He was in the mood to just kill him and go home.

He focused back on Callidor, his armour scraping together as he adjusted his stance, his right foot forward, legs slightly bent, keeping a controlled power grip, with his right hand under the handleguard and his left hand at the bottom.

Callidor had finished inspecting his staff, his mouth wide open in a expression of shock and mourning, a brief noise escaping his throat, before he looked back at Sebastian, and hissed through his fangs. With a disturbingly fluid speed, Callidor spun his staff in his fingers, then adjusted his grip into a two handed combat stance, revealing that the base of the staff was a simple pointed stave.

“A contest of arms it is then.” Callidor growled, and began to circle him. Sebastian answered his step with a careful rhythm of his own, his boots pressing on the ground with a clinking sound as he kept Callidor in front of him, aiming his swordpoint at him in a stance mirroring Father’s in his duel with Crannog.

“Though your people…” Callidor spoke. “…may not love you so much when you’re staked to the ground from bowel to mouth for all on this blasted cliff to see!”

And with a yell Callidor lunged forward. Sebastian caught his thrust and countered with a quick cut to his right shoulder which Callidor caught with the centre of his staff and the fight was on.

Callidor’s strength, blow by blow, unfatigued by nearly a whole hour of continuous battle was more than a match for Sebastian’s own strength. Callidor yelled and rained down blow after blow, a thunderstorm of black iron stave strikes, long thrusts that took all of Sebastian’s focus and balance to parry, and all his strength and training in footwork and stances to counter and halt his sweeping blows and battering strikes. Sebastian side-stepped and circled around Callidor to give ground, not wanting to be backed into the wall of fire and be incinerated alive.

Callidor snarled, spinning his staff above his head in an exuberant display of martial strength and coordination that Sebastian did not expect from a feeble, lean-bodied priest. His next blow swung quicker than Sebastian could parry and he winced as the blow struck him on the right side of his breastplate, hard enough to dent the metal. Sebastian cursed inwardly. If he managed to bend the plate out of shape, forcing the metal into his ribcage, fighting in his armour would become very uncomfortable very quickly.

Callidor bellowed, cackling like a possessed madman and the thunderstorm of stave strikes, a black bar of flanged, resilient black iron, much like the armour and halberds of his honour guard, fell upon Sebastian again. Iron sang and clashed like a dissonant chorus of clanging symbols against the edge and flat of his sword. Sebastian kept his fore and aft grip, maximising the point, edge and reach of his smaller sword as best as he could, thrusting and parrying, cuts and powerful sweeps when he saw an opening, but to no avail. Callidor’s defence was too solid, too nimble and ferocious.

The black iron sung with a dull, menacing hum while his own steel longsword sung from the crisp scraping kisses made on the staff’s iron work. Callidor’s dull crimson robes span about his arms and legs like the dress of a whirling djinn, and he used their oversized, billowing property to maximum effect. One sweeping blow to his head that Sebastian parried, a sail of red, sulphur stinking cloth and then an impact in Sebastian’s stomach, making him gasp as the blow struck him low in the abdomen. He looked up to see Callidor’s left leg descending, a foot of rotten dull putrid brown and green flesh and cracked nails and realised he had kicked him.

Sebastian recovered as Callidor came towards him, spear point raised to impale him through the chest with a two handed thrust. Steadying his breath, Sebastian tried a different approach. He had to try and get behind Callidor’s range, or that staff will soon crack his fingers, knee and skull before running him through. He waited until Callidor drew closer in range and thrust at his chest. Against his instinct to sidestep or leap back, Sebastian parried the thrust to his right, the iron scraping along the flat side of his sword and leapt within Callidor’s range. Disengaging, he lifted his sword, now face to face with the rank, sulphuric stinking demon priest and brought the pommel down in a two-handed strike on Callidor’s veiled forehead.

He expected to hear his skull crack, but instead heard only his warped voice grunt in pain and saw him stumble back. Sebastian refused to let him give ground, and advanced towards him, lifting his sword for another series of cutting strikes. Callidor recovered, black sticky blood pooling under his veil where his pommel had broken the skin and lifted his staff in time to ward off Sebastian’s offensive. Sebastian yelled as he battered Callidor’s offensive again and again, doing his best to keep his blows unpredictable, raging against his defence.

But Callidor’s defence held again, and Sebastian’s burst of adrenaline soon flagged. Callidor spun the staff in a fanning, twirling arc that knocked Sebastian’s sword away. The returning strike sent an explosion of pain in Sebastian’s left temple. Pain clenched his eyes shut as he fought against the rising sense of nausea and stars flashing in his vision. Lifting his gauntlet to his temple, he forced his eyes open in time to see Callidor’s malice ridden grin of hatred as he thrust his staff now at his neck. Sebastian swung hard in his parry to the left, turning the spear tip but feeling something pull in the right side of his back. With a wild yell he swung desperately at the archpriest’s head and neck. Callidor side-stepped, ducking away in time to save his neck, but not so for Sebastian’s sword to cut and rip at his red-fabric hood.

Now behind Callidor, Sebastian forced himself to resume his two-handed grip as Callidor spun with a low back-handed strike with the back of his left hand, low enough as if to reap the small tufts of grass that grow on the clifftop. Sebastian stepped back, lift his left leg to stop the staff from catching it.

Callidor snarled in frustration, rejoining his right hand to the staff and thrust again. Sebastian risked exposing his chest by thrusting with one hand forward in a lunge. Callidor’s spearpoint grazed the front of his breastplate, and Callidor grunted as Sebastian’s sharp spear point cut through the light red and black fabric of his robes. Black blood began to seep and pour down his chest.

Sebastian swung at Callidor’s left shoulder, only to clash hard with Callidor’s parry. They locked for a stalemate, refusing to give ground, grunting with bloodthirsty determined effort. Callidor was taller than Sebastian by at least a few inches, and he bore down on him with all the manic, fiendish hatred a demon could muster.

“You fool…” Callidor snarled. “I am blessed with the strength of the most insidious and the most powerful circle of Hell in all existence. What have you, a mortal fool have to match the like of Astalloth’s demonic elite?”

Sebastian clenched his eyes shut, feeling his boots beginning to drag through the hard mud. He had to think quickly or Callidor’s strength as he so boasted would soon overwhelm him. He glanced at the near translucent veil on Callidor’s face, where his eyes, or perhaps two black pits his noseless face and his yellow fangs under his clenched lips-

And at his unprotected right hand as it held the broken end where the crystal used to reside.

Sebastian braced himself, then turned, offering his right side to the demon’s staff, and turned his sword-edge, the flat side sliding up Callidor’s staff, right to where his bony fingers lay. Callidor gasped and tried to pull his right arm back. Sebastian’s sword struck into the bone of Callidor’s forefinger and middle finger, cutting through the decaying flesh.

Callidor cried out in surprise and pain as two of his fingers flew off his hand, and let go of the staff to withdraw his maimed hand. Sebastian swung up from a low angle, cutting from his left hip to his right shoulder with all his strength at the centre of the staff.

With a shower of reddish sparks like Crannog’s hellfire ax, Callidor’s staff severed cleanly in half. The demon priest stumbled back as he glanced at half of the staff in his hand, the other half tumbling to the ground. The rest of time flowed as if in slow motion, and Sebastian’s training, instinct and pounding fury in his chest decided the rest of the fight. Callidor regained his footing and with a manic yell, thrust at Sebastian’s chest with the broken remainder of his staff.

Sebastian adjusted his footing so that his right foot stood behind his left, twisting out of the way while bringing his sword within range of Callidor’s staff. With one downward chop, he struck Callidor’s weapon from his hand. Callidor twisted forward, lunging at his neck with his maimed hand, cracked grey nails on his thumb and remaining two fingers poised like a hawk’s talons towards his neck.

Sebastian twisted and struck upward, ignoring the pain that flared up in his right leg and back as he struck at Callidor’s arm. It bit through the fabric of his robe, into the bone of his arm above the eblow and cut through, slicing his arm off in a shower of hissing black blood.

Callidor’s scream rose to a shriek of mortal agony, and he staggered back, wailing at the top of his lungs as he clutched at the stump of his right arm, the narrow limb and mangled hand now on the ground, twitching where it lay.

Sebastian yelled and from his right leg, sprang forward with a front snapping kick of his left boot. The silver and grey armoured sabaton slammed into the crimson robed chest and stomach of Callidor, and he nearly folded at the waist as his head fell forward and his arm flew up from the force of the kick. Callidor grunted with pain as he fell bodily onto the ground, his head bouncing once from the impact.

And there Callidor lay, writhing and gritting his teeth in agony, blood spurting and watering the ground to wet it with his tainted black blood.

Struck down, and defeated.


	6. The Dark Vision

Sebastian let his left hand release the pommel of his sword, keeping a tight grip with his sword-hand, and breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the exhaustion of the fight for his life come crashing down on him. His breath was hot enough to send mists of vapour into the cool evening air.

“The master! Our master is struck down!” One of the peon’s wormy voices drew his gaze up at the hooded stooped bodies of the lowly servants of Callidor. The sight behind them however drew a pang of fear in his chest, deflating his sense of relief as he realised that the peon’s work was almost done. He could see now that the reddish portal like a jagged freshly forged glass panel, had grown to nearly the full span of the arch. He would have to hurry if he had to destroy the portal. Perhaps Pos could help him dislodge some of the stones and collapse the archway, preventing the portal from remaining open and forcing it to collapse in on itself.

He would have to deal with the peons, and quickly too.

There was a whooshing sound like the wind stirring up the flames of a brazier, and he turned to see that the wall of fire was beginning to subside. Callidor’s control of his dark magic on account his injury and his fatigue was slipping.

But he was still very much alive, Sebastian remembered, as the priest let out a feeble, whimpering moan from his lips below and in front of his feet.

Callidor rolled onto his right side, lifting his bony left hand to his severed arm, before glancing up at him with an open mouthed expression of exhaustion and fear. Then he began to crawl, kicking limply with his legs and dragging himself with his one remaining arm through the earth. Another feeble, weary, breathless whimper escaped his cracked, decayed lips.

Sebastian followed him with a steady, unhurried pace. Callidor was too exhausted to do him any harm. Perhaps now would be a good time for the demon priest to beg, or for Sebastian to indulge any last requests from his foe. That is, any that Sebastian would be able to do within reason. Mercy however, would not be one of them.

“Wait…” Callidor gasped, his warped, demonic voice tremulous and quavering. “Wait…”

“Wait!?” Sebastian glanced down and returned with vengeful fury to match the murderous and cowardly demon’s earlier zeal. “Like you waited until after the duel to break your own word? Make off with hostages like some petulant child who lost a game fair and square? Just to have the last laugh?”

Callidor glanced up at him, panting as his own blood began to soak into the ground and into his crimson robes, adding a blotchy irregular smear on his robes, mingling with the dirt he tried to crawl away from him on.

“You…you must understand…surely, I could not return to my master empty handed, not after my invasion plan went to ruin?” Callidor spoke, wincing with effort as he dragged and pushed himself along the dry earth, panting as he crawled.

“He is not known…” The priest continued. “…for his mercy. One does not become a demon lord for forgiving any slights, as easily as your tolerant king offering a royal pardon! Or like you, with a soft heart like a woman!”

“Keep talking.” Sebastian glared down at the priest’s stricken face, making him wish he had eaten his words. “Your master’s displeasure should be the least of your worries now.”

“Oh how merciful and kind, is the prince of Longland!” Callidor bitterly spoke.

“It is a mercy indeed, to rid the world of one more demon, one less servant of hell to invade and pillage my world!” Sebastian roared, gesturing behind him with his free hand at the battle dying down behind him. Too many men and women have died in service to day. Callidor’s death would mean their deaths were not in vain. Not for nothing.

“You humans…” Callidor seethed, spittle mingled with black ichor dribbling through his teeth as he appeared to be gripped with white-hot rage. “Fighting for your own delusions of order, of justice and peace! The world was not built on such things, nor does the natural order permit such weaknesses and the whining of fools and soft-hearted whelps!”

Callidor glared at him under his veil.

“We would not exist if not for the atrocious, murderous rule of man!” He hissed up at Sebastian. “We…are the offspring of the primal, unfettered evil that dwells in the hearts and minds of men! And you think killing me will make the world a better place? Make this…random, chaotic, blood-stained treacherous hellscape that is your home, a place more torturous and more evil than any of the circles of hell combined, a more just world!”

A hideous, wracking, coughing choking cackle rose from his throat, and he bowed his head to the ground, his lean narrow frame under his thick red robes trembling with bitter, malevolent mirth, before it rose to meet him again. His cut hood flapped in the breeze that swept across the cliff top, revealing more of his bony flesh drawn taut against his lean skull around his cheeks and neck.

“You pathetic, deluded fool! You speak from a lofty height of comfort, and ease and protection. Sheltered from the real world, and how it truly works! Only the strong command it, can ever hope to master the whims of fate and desire, and in their bloody toils to overcome their foes, they alone deserve the right to decide what is right and what is wrong in the world. Your code of honour, your mercy, your very religion is a lie that exists, only because you belong to a kingdom strong enough to crush those who dissent against their views!”

“My kingdom is founded on the vanquishing of evil and is upheld by tolerance and peace!” Sebastian countered. He would not let the cynical, hopeless, villainous bile erode his hope and his spirit. “Our strength comes from what is commonly held by all to be right, and what is good. By helping each other, not vainly stealing and hoarding power like the starving rats your kind make us out to be!”

“A magic sword placed your father on the throne of this wet miserable little island!” Callidor returned. “Power is only the constant in this world and soon, its balance is set to change.”

Sebastian’s heart felt a peculiar, haunting chill at those words. Something in the priest’s words held some sway over the high of victory of his heart, forming like a dark cloud to sully the sunlight of glory and elation in his chest.

“What are you saying? Speak clearly!” Sebastian demanded, indulging the priest if only to try and discern a plan from his dying lips.

Callidor only laughed in his raking, dry chuckle, blood pooling down the right corner of his lip, before speaking again.

“This world…is about to burn! The very end of this sorry pitiful realm is in sight, and your precious holy kingdom…will be its staging ground!”

Sebastian had no patience for the priest’s accursed tongue. He lifted his sword at Callidor’s throat, its edge battered and slick with demon blood, but still sharp enough to cut the demon down where he lay.

“Tell me what your master’s plan is, and your end will be quick! And this promise, I will fulfil to the letter!”

Callidor grimaced, but a ghastly curl of his lips turned his grimace into a hideous grin.

“My master…works in alliance with other powers…powers that never before in history would be seen marshalled in might with the forces of Hell! The forces of death, that have plagued mortal kind since time immemorial have arraigned themselves against you! Ice, death, shadow, hellfire, and war. The dread lords have come together, summoned by one undeniable, inexorable call, to serve…him.”

“Who!” Sebastian demanded. “Tell me! Who is your master of masters! Who is the one your lord would serve!”

Callidor only chuckled, grinning more maniacally and maliciously under his insane, hideous grin.

“Tell me, or by Pax Leonis, I will-”

“Your God…” Callidor interrupted. “…will not be able to save you from what is to come…”

Sebastian suddenly fell silent, his words somehow failing him. A fear he could not quite comprehend suddenly arose in his chest, more deeper and more colder than the fear of seeing the portal being completed.

Callidor’s words, filled with such certainty and black-hearted will, filled his mind with their oily, unearthly presence as he spoke.

“His wings will darken the very skies…his jaws of oblivion will open wide to swallow all of existence…his hatred for all life will consume even the purest of hearts…and with one fell swoop, and red eyes like the heart of a black hole, he will annihilate and destroy the false gods and the false dream of mortal existence. All that exists will be under him, and in him and decreed by him and only him alone to exist. He is the end. He is the darkness that awaits us at the final death of the sun, and the world, and the breaking of all reality as we know it!”

Sebastian’s heart pounded in his chest. A desire to flee, to curl up in a foetal ball, to make himself small and meek and tiny, arose in his heart, and yet he stood as stock still, his legs rooting him to the spot.

And with one rattling snarl, Callidor spoke the name of his master of masters.

“He…is…Felgast.”

_Fel…Felgast? The devil dragon? The Wyrm of the End? The demon that the Prophet, riding on the white lion Baryafax, drove into the darkest realms of space, beyond Athiral and cursed to live forever in the cold sea of darkness._

_No…_ Sebastian shook his head. Felgast, if he did truly exist in the capacity and monstrosity that the scriptures did portend, was long gone. He was exiled so long before the age of man to a realm where no being could possibly draw warmth and air to sustain themselves. He is a legend. A myth. A tale for children and writers and theologians and philosophers to entwine their endless debates and the realm’s cultural celebrations of good overcoming evil.

“A myth.” He repeated aloud to himself, and looked down at Callidor. “A story told for children and romantics.”

“Demons walk the earth, and monsters hunt mortals wherever they can be found.” Callidor spoke. “And you in your piety and dogmatic view would question the existence of the one true dragon god?”

Sebastian shook his head, clenching his jaw muscles, summoning the previously fading will in him to end the life of the demon priest before him, and banishing the spectre of fear from his heart.

“I do not care to indulge the mad prophecy of a fiend who breaks his word and steals children from their families. Make your peace, Callidor. You will soon rejoin your master in the pit where you belong!” And with that declaration he lifted his sword.

Callidor lifted his narrow arm.

“No…wait! The children…I can explain! By what right does a princeling of the kingdom of men have to kill me!” The crippled demon priest pleaded to him. “The knowledge I have…surely my life is worth sparing if not to interrogate and glean more of my master’s plans!”

“A deception of fear. Rumours to spread chaos and paranoia!” Sebastian replied. “Felgast is long gone, and if he ever existed as the scriptures say he did, he would died a long time ago in the dark space beyond this world. Your words mean nothing to me, and now, so does your life.”

Callidor was suddenly gripped by one last desperate fervour to preserve his life. He turned and tried to drag himself further along, his nails ploughing through the dirt under his hand.

“Please, the children…I didn’t mean to…Their bodies can fit in tight spaces.” He explained. “They…they make the perfect spies! I don’t mean to hurt them!” He finished with a pitiful whimper.

Sebastian paused. Something about his words.

_Hurt them?_

“Demon kind, we…” The priest pontificated. “….we love children! Perhaps, a bit too much…Some of us, if a devil may advocate, have needs that no succubus or elixir can quell…Please…I only meant for them as a consolation prize…surely there are enough brats in the world! A few, to be mine, and mine alone…they would be safe, and protected, at the cost of serving me…A few won’t go amiss, and if I were…allowed to keep them…”

Sebastian’s blood, chilled by the priest’s dark prophecy, now ran hot as Callidor’s words and the implications they carried….

The offspring of man’s evil desires...

The children.

Sebastian’s hand trembled, and revulsion arose in his mind, at letting this fiend, this…monster talk to him. Callidor had earned his place by Astalloth’s side, as an archpriest, a minister to the lord of lust. Lust in all its corrupted, tainted, twisted forms….

Lust….

“You monster!” Sebastian roared, and lifted his sword, turning it to point downward, right into Callidor’s chest. The priest’s mouth opened in horror as he realised the grave error of his pleading words, revealing his true nature. He lifted his feeble hand as if to ward off the death blow, then turned towards the manifesting portal, to the hellish land beyond.

“Master! Save me! Save-”

Sebastian roared and plunged the point of his sword deep into the ruined crimson fabric of Callidor’s chest. The steel point sheathed into his chest, where his heart was, and he struck it deep, plunging it so deep that it punched into the earth, staking him to the ground.

Callidor gasped, coughing and wheezing at the fatal blow. He looked down, whimpering and sniffling and hacking blood and spittle in his lungs as he reached up at the word, pawing at it with his fingers, and cutting his hand on its sharp edge. Sebastian gripped the pommel of his sword, adjusted his grip.

And twisted.

Callidor howled as bone broke and his cloven heart was mangled by the wrenching, ripping turn of Sebastian’s blade. Sebastian’s spirit lifted with grim satisfaction at the deed, and he lowered his head, his thick hair falling about his cheeks as he growled down at the face of the demonic priest.

“You…” He spoke through gritted teeth. “…will not hurt them…anymore!”

Callidor tried to speak, his lips and teeth moving to utter words, a curse, a protest, but nothing came out. Instead, black blood spat from his lips, and he choked on the viscous ichor. Then with a rattling sigh, he subsided in repose, his mouth open and filled with his own blood. And then he was still.

Sebastian let out one final breath, his exhaustion hitting him and his fatigued body like a blow. His whole body, all of his muscles ached, as did his head. He had really managed to get that hit more times today than he would have liked in any battle. Davyth would have called that knocking some sense into him, while Mother would call such injuries earned through risky behaviour getting the sense knocked out of him.

_They both think me a fool either way, but I’m a fool who does the right thing, and both are proud of me in their way. That is all I can ask for in this life._

And with that thought, and the sight of Callidor dead before him, relief flooded his body to soothe his aching muscles and injuries. He had done it.

This was it! The day was won! He had ended Callidor and rid the land of his taint and evil forever! The world could breathe easier, and families and their children would sleep more soundly, knowing that there was one less demon to be wary of in the night. One less obvious and true evil that existed, an evil that could be slain with the swing of his sword and the might of his thews.

Callidor, and those who thought like him were wrong. Sometimes, the world was that simple, good did exist in the hearts of man, and evil was this easy to do away with.

Sebastian let out another gasp of relief, more taxed in his stamina than the tussle with the hell guard, more so than his frantic duel with Ervik and Torr the Imp Brute. He hung his head low, breathing in the stink of his own sweat, mingled with the metallic smell of his armour, and the stench from Callidor’s rotting body. He glanced up at the priest’s still veiled and still hooded face, which, he realised was wider around the edges, allowing him to see better around his peripheral vision.

That hood fell back, revealing more of the grey veil that obscured his eyes. And yet, if Sebastian looked closer, closer to where his eyes were…were there actually eyes there, or-

“Son! Sebastian!”

_Father? That was Father’s voice-_

Sebastian turned around, trying to look behind him, but the wall of fire was still up, even though it was subsiding. He could not see…

“Don’t let him touch you! Cut off his….don’t touch…” Sebastian could barely hear what Father was trying to say, over the crackle of flames from the wall behind him.

“I can’t hear!” Sebastian called out. “I can’t hear you, the spell is still….alive.”

Sebastian realised, and looked back down at Callidor, realising his mistake too late.

Callidor was looking up at him, and grinning a deranged grin, wide enough to reveal the yellow teeth at their exposed roots on receding, decaying red gums.

Then his left hand lurched forward and clenched him by the throat. Sebastian had blinked one moment and then Callidor’s clammy, cold hand was around his mail covered neck. He could feel the demon’s flesh under his bearded chin, around the sides of his neck.

Sebastian tried to cry out, but could not, the very air strangled our of his lungs. And to his horror, Callidor snarled and rose.

He rose like a body possessed by a malevolent spirit, rose until his body lifted from the earth, pulling the sword that had pinned him there with him.

And Sebastian was reminded that Callidor was a demon, and had long surpassed mortal weaknesses long, long ago. He struggled and writhed in his grip, fear paralysing his arm, the strangulation draining him of the strength he desperately wanted to summon to strike at the priest, to rip out his sword and behead him. That was the only sure way, perhaps, to finish a demon save perhaps destroying its heart, but Callidor was more powerful than he had realised, too late.

A gurgling, malevolent snarl issued from Callidor’s fangs. At this range, Callidor could rip out any part of his throat with those jagged disfigured fangs, and Sebastian would be powerless to stop him.

“A mad prophecy of a fiend….me…mad!?” Callidor spat, his magic likely used to the extreme in order to allow him to crawl back from beyond the grave. With demonic priests, there was no reckoning, no way to fully predict the extent of their powers, and the lengths they would go to to stay alive.

“If you do not believe me…!” His captor hissed with a baleful edge to his voice. “Then I will show you…!”

He glanced down at his severed arm and Sebastian saw it there on the ground. Then it lifted from the ground, a dreaded hum in the air as the hand flew as if lifted by a spirit, its fingers splayed out. They reached Calldor’s face, grabbed his veil, and tore it off, removing the hood in the process. The arm fell to the ground, its purpose served and now a severed limb once again.

Callidor’s head was bald, covered with scars and patches of bone showing through rotting flesh. But his eyes were the worst part of him. The worst, in that he did not have them at all. Just black pits, holes in his eye sockets, with rags of flesh torn off around the fleshy pits to show more bone and muscle underneath. The eyelids were gone, torn out along with the pupils.

“Behold!” Callidor spoke. “The gift of dark prophecy!”

Sebastian wanted to call out, to scream, to kick at Callidor, anything to loosen his grip.

And then without warning, the world fell away under his feet. All sense became numb, as if the stages of being strangled to death had accelerated him to the bitter final end. Blackness fell all around him, smothering all he knew, and then–

* * *

_Darkness._

_Sebastian was alone._

_Alone, and afraid._

_He was in his armour, and standing on ground that he wasn’t entirely sure was solid. He looked around, his footsteps and his armour causing echoes as he moved, rattling and thudding on the ground for what felt like infinity._

_Sebastian could hear only his breathing. He was aware of only a dim, pale white light, and he looked up._

_It was the moon. Full and gleaming, in a white sheen that was beautiful to look on._

_But then the air was filled with the sound of flapping wings, and a loud, deep calling sound. It was a crow, but a large one, and soon Sebastian identified the culprit. Gliding through the shadows, flapping its wings like a condor, a crow flew from the darkness. Its head was completely obscured by pale grey mask, like a plague doctor’s, and its eyes were black with red, small irises._

_Sebastian was unsettled, and felt fear within him even though he knew not why. The crow landed on a tree that suddenly appeared, one that was barren, white as a bone and dead. It craned its head in spasmodic, avian twists to survey its surroundings._

_Then its head turned towards him. And when it saw him, those red eyes affixing him like darts, Sebastian felt and feared a very mortal sense of danger, in which if he did not escape, it would devour him and eat him whole._

_Its beak opened, and its caw was so deep and yet so shrill and monstrous that Sebastian stumbled back, and turned to flee. But he was too slow! It was as though he was in the worst kind of nightmare, fleeing a monster when his legs were stuck in treacle or bog mud._

_Sebastian turned, and gasped in horror as the crow leapt from its branch to open its wings, large enough to almost eclipse the moon, then dove towards him, folding its wings to swoop towards him like a bird of prey._

_Sebastian tried to run, but was too slow, and his heart hammered at his chest. He had to get away! Why can’t he get away. Sebastian turned, and tried to reach for his sword, but it wasn’t on his belt. He was defenceless. His second worst nightmare! He turned to see the masked crow and cried out as the talons opened wide, its grey flesh sporting curved black talons. They fastened on him, tighter than any rope or vice could seize him and ripped him up from the ground._

_Sebastian flailed, beating at the flesh around the talons, but found his hand and knuckles bloodied and in pain, for the skin was as hard as dragon scales. Then he was turned and lifted up, high enough for the crow to face him._

_Sebastian saw that its beak was glowing, glowing with a white hot, green pallor, and then it thrust forward, burying the tip into his chest, right where his heart was. Sebastian threw his head back, howling in agony. The blow was not like a mortal wound, but one that sheared into his heart, wounding his very soul._

_Sebastian wailed and cried out from the pain, and yet was aware of an orange warmth, a light as if from a torch burning behind him, and he turned, despite the pain in his chest to see it. He immediately wished that he had not._

_For lo, looming closer and closer, was the series of the three towers, each one a magnificent spire as part of the grand castle of Rochlann, his home named after his grandfather on his mother’s side._

_And it was burning. The whole castle palace, the whole city was alight in flame, reddish and consuming, raking and licking and eating all that was within and around it._

_“Die…with the rest of your bloodline.” Spoke the crow, muffled under its mask with a detached malice in its voice. The beak withdrew and Sebastian clutched at his heart, groaning in pain._

_Then the talons let go, and he fell, screaming and spiralling towards the ground, towards one of the burning town quarters, yet the air was not sucked from his lungs as he fell. All he could do was shout at the top of his lungs_

_“NO!!”_

_Faster and faster he spiralled, until the flames rose around him, and the smoke choked him, and he thought that he would die from the fall. But then he slowed, slowed so swiftly that he was almost gliding to the ground._

_And then he was there, standing, with no injury on his person, yet the burning remained. His armour had changed, and he wore only his black and brown leather doublet and breeches, not even so much as a gambeson to protect him or even a studded leather vest._

_He walked, through the flames, through the burning town with the cobblestones under his feet like pebbles, and the blocks of sandstone that were the homes of the city folk, carved with square windows, mixed with the redbrick houses with slated roofs, and later in the poorer quarters, the thatched hay roofs amongst houses of dried mud and some of wood._

_There were men, women and, oh god…children, frozen as still as statues and…they were burning…by God they were burning. All of them fleeing and running and their screams, so loud and piercing and railing in his ear sockets, all he could was their pain as the fires incinerated them._

_A screaming cry, deep and rumbling and alien, rang out, causing him to duck, and the flap of wings made him duck down and glance up, and he saw the rounded chest and the wide bat-like wings of a hell-drake._

_He looked up and saw that indeed, it was a dragon from hell, red in wing and scale with eyes as fierce and malevolent as the demons it shared its home with in its circle. And around him came swarms of spiralling bats, and winged imps, squealing and squalling and filling the air with their flapping and their infernal din._

_Another roar heralded the arrival of another hell-drake, directly above him, and Sebastian looked and cried out in surprise as the red drake, with a mane of curved jagged spikes, opened its jaws with curved narrow fangs. There was no escape, and Sebastian cowered and covered his head and body with his arms._

_The fiery maw opened and devoured him, and his body was burned and broken and eviscerated by tooth and flame. He was falling, falling down the dragons gullet, and then-_

_He was rising, rising up from the ground, as he was falling until he was not and was instead rising as if he had leapt a great distance._

_He struck the ground, hard and…cold?_

_He looked about, prizing his hands from the cold service before the flesh stuck to the dry ice, and he glanced around._

_More statues stood before him, people frozen where they stood, except now they stood as sculptures of ice, with icicles formed from their arms. They appeared to be suspended in states of retreat, running and shielding their children and loved ones from the blast of ice that had overtaken them._

_Sebastian glanced to his right, and saw the frozen wave of ice, cyan and pale blue, like jagged fingertips reach towards the centre of his burning castle like the realm of the Jotuns had been unlocked right in the middle of his own city._

_Then a smashing noise caused him to turn to his left, and he felt the chill of the air seep into his bones, as a hooded figure approached, coming through the statues. And knocking them over with a careless push of his icy blue hands. Each statue, be they one man or woman or a frozen family as whole, fell and shattered into bloody red fragments._

_Sebastian tried to move, but something held him fast. He glanced down and realised that his feet had been frozen to the ground. He tried to move and lower his hands to pry himself free, but realised that his hands and arms, and everything else about him was frozen. All of him was frozen as still as a sculpture._

_The hooded figure approached him, his face save an imperious cyan skinned chin, its skin withered and shrunken, yet its features austere and cruel. His lips sneered._

_“Pathetic.” He spoke in a deep, posh voice, and lifted the back of his hand, driving it down towards his face._

_And the blow shattered him into a thousand shards and pieces, tumbling down to the ground, tumbling, tumbling down into infinity._

_And then he was whole, but yet, still._

_None of him was frozen or shattered into a million pieces, but he was trapped, paralysed under a stinking, dead weight._

_The smell of fresh, bloody raw meat, like a butchery’s line of cadavers hung from a rail, mingled with the scent of faeces and the sound of flies, filled his senses. He looked to his left and saw only the unstaring gaze of a pale-skinned woman, a peasant by the wrapping around her hair, looking back at him and laid upside down. She was dead, as a fly crawled across her face, and then on her eye._

_Trembling, fighting the urge to scream as raw terror and panic surged within him, Sebastian glanced around him. His limbs were buried under what he realised to his sickening horror was a mountain of bodies, freshly killed, with some around his arms and legs still warm. They had been slaughtered and dumped like carcasses in a mound, their limbs strewn about them and their heads laid out at unnatural angles._

_Sebastian could smell the blood, smell the cloying scent of offal and gore and rot in the air, choking him. He gasped, and tried to move, to extricate himself from the mound. He was able to get his right arm free, only gasp in horror at the ravaged state of it, blood stained, dirt-covered and scored with bites and claw marks._

_A wet crunching sound startled him, and he forced himself to grow as silent as possible, holding his breath as much as he could._

_There was a creature, long limbed with a hunched back, stood on fours in the shadows. It was eating something, tearing flesh messily in scraps and strips of meat from its kill. Sebastian glanced down at the corpse, and paled at the sight, for it was a small elf girl, with pointed ears and blood matted brown hair._

_The creature snorted, enraptured in its gorging, and Sebastian tried to move, reaching over to his left side to pull his arm free. He was able to rip his other arm free. And then a body, dislodged by his jostling, came loose and tumbled heavily from the pile, landing in the streets, soaked in puddles of blood._

_The creature froze, and then turned, its features barely illuminated by the distant fire nearby, ridged and ugly, with a slender lower jaw and a wide head like a lasher’s, but with larger, soulless black eyes. They blinked once as the creature sniffed at the air in a series of chuffing sounds. Then its lips peeled back to show curved, needle like white fangs, opening a maw large enough to swallow a human’s head whole as it hissed, low and venomous like a serpent._

_Sebastian panicked, and struggled to free his legs, but may as well have been trapped as he was outrunning the crow. The hunched creature lowered on its haunches, walking strangely on its knuckles, before quills arose on its back, trembling like a rattlesnake’s, before it screamed, a rage-filled, hate-filled screech that tore his very soul from his body. And then it came out him, running to his right before lunging at him, bearing curved claws in its hands to rival its white curved fangs._

_It bit down onto his unprotected throat, and Sebastian tried to scream as the fangs cut like razors into his skin, messily cutting into his neck, draining him of his blood as it bit and ripped and tore and began to suck at his vessels._

_Then it wrenched him from the pile of bodies, and threw him to the blood-drenched ground. He rolled as he fell, and landed on his back, awaiting the beast to come and finish him off as it came on him, its bestial screech a promise of a violent, agonising death._

_But instead, only the screams and hoarse cries of man and athfolk in agony filled his ears, and he opened his eyes to find himself lying on the ground. He was lying on something hard, covering most of his back and his legs, yet he sensed it to be something narrow and lean, too thin to be a bed. His arms were outstretched, and tied, he realised, to the mooring he was on. He glanced down and realised he was tied to a post, bound around the base where his legs were by his feet, now bare and without shoes with one foot atop the other. His hands too were bare._

_A rustle of armour made him look up. Staring down at him was a knight, with a flat-topped greathelm, with the wings of a dragon forged onto the side. Through the thin slots of his visor, he could see the man’s eyes, impassive and cold._

_“Soldier!” He pleaded. “What is going on! What is the meaning of this?”_

_The knight said nothing, at first, but then proceeded to kneel, his white surcoat long enough to protect his knees as he rested them on his arms. There was a mallet in his right hand. and a long thick nail in his left hand. Sebastian was outraged at first as to why this knight would so brazenly kneel on his prince, before the knight set the point of the nail in the centre of the palm of his right hand, and looked at him._

_“Wait…no.” He begged, already sensing what was about to happen._

_“Felgast wills it.” The knight replied in a stoic emotionless tone. And then he lifted the mallet and struck. Sebastian yelled in pain into the smoke filled night sky as the nail drove through the skin, punching through bone and into the wood beneath him. The mallet rose and fell again, driving it deeper into the wood and through his hand, then another time, hard enough for the flat-head of the nail to cut into his palm. Sebastian howled in agony, then felt the sharp point again at his left palm._

_Looking over, he saw another knight, but this time his helm was more alien, more sinister in appearance, with the the head of a scaled dragon eclipsing his upper face and head, leaving only his nose and lips exposed._

_“Do it!” He commanded. “Someone get his feet. Hammer him down. This one’s a squirmer.”_

_“No…No wait. Please please-” Sebastian wailed, tears stinging his eyes from the pain, and at the dull sound of the nail being driven through his flesh, he screamed again, as the knight on the right hammered his nail even further home. The dragon-helmed knight struck again, bringing fresh pain to add to the agony with his right hand._

_Then calloused, rough hands grabbed at his feet, and he looked down to see a large burly man, his muscular arms exposed to the elements. He wore a vest of iron with chain mail underneath, and his helm, with horns like a bull curved up into the sky, had a visor fashioned after a human skull, with his eyes leering at him with sadistic disdain and his mouth exposed to grin at him with equally cruel measure. He lifted his own mallet, and drove his nail through his right and left foot. Sebastian trembled and shook with pain as he sobbed, his agony unending. He sobbed and whimpered, all pretense of strength and manly stoicism gone from his mind._

_“Lift them up.” A clear, stern male voice, middle aged and filled with authority rang out, and Sebastian glanced to his left to see a man with a black robe, supplemented with another purple robe, embroidered with images of fire and dragon wings in its coloured design. His face was obscured by a hood as well, and he held a black staff with an icon of a golden dragon crouching on top of it, its wings unfurled and open wide._

_Sebastian felt himself being pulled along the ground, the wide-armed post secured at the arms by lengths of long rope at the ends past his nailed hands. He felt himself dip as the post fell into a pre-dug hole for it to fall into, before it held, and he was soon lifted up, higher and higher, until he lay staked out on the cross for all to see. There were more screams, and other men and women and even children being lifted and crucified around him._

_“All glory be to Felgast.” The hooded man intoned. “We offer you this sacrifice with many thanks and mortal fear and trembling…”  
  
_

_The post suddenly slid down, and his own body pulled against the nails by the force of gravity, making him feel as though he would be ripped from the nails that held him to the cross to begin with. He clenched his eyes shut, and cried out in agony, his hands and toes skewered like a piece of meat pinned to the wall._

_“Brother.” The skull-faced, burly man glanced at the hooded man, while retrieving from the ground a hefty, black mallet with its head the span of three men’s heads and two in height. “This one looks to be in agony. Let me put him out of his misery.” He glanced up at him, hefting his hammer with a toss of his right hand._

_“If you must, Malleus.” The priest and brother of the madman with the hammer permitted with a wave of his hand._

_Malleus turned to look up at him, and with his eyes wide and his lips peeled to show dirty, yellow teet in a malicious chuckle, he yelled and swung the hammer towards his stomach._

_The impact crushed him like a boulder to his chest, knocking the wind from his lungs as it crushed bone and pulverised his organs. The cross broke from the impact, and he was falling, falling through the black, dark air, the screams of the dying around him fading into phantasms and echoing nightmares._

_The cross shattered around him, and he finally hit and crumbled to the ground. Surprisingly, his hands and legs were not pierced or bleeding or throbbing with agony. He came to rest on his front, on his arms and knees, gasping and terrified, broken in spirit on the floor._

_“No…no…” He could only say to himself, ruined and desolate, devoid of hope._

_“Yes…” A cool, rasping voice, smooth and honeyed yet filled with malevolence and murderous intent like a predator, echoed around him. Then a small wall of flame appeared, shooting into existence, burning at nothing yet consuming the air with a ravenous hunger._

_Sebastian lifted his hand to shield himself from their searing heat, their light almost as bright as the sun. Then the inside of the wall diminished, and Sebastian realised that it was a doorway, not a wall, and from within, a tall figure stood._

_His eyes glowed with a red crimson light, and although his face was obscured, his head was adorned with the ram horns of a demon, yet his body was concealed in a light flowing grey fabric, and his right hand held a black twisted cane. His other hand lifted to point its claw at him._

_“The powers of darkness have arraigned themselves against you and your realm, Prince Sebastian.”_

_The clawed hand curled in to a fist._

_“Now witness as I destroy all that you love…”_

_Sebastian could only stand and watch helplessly as the tall demon widened his arms, and the doorway opened up, wider and wider, until it was large and tall enough to exceed in size any doorway that Sebastian had ever known._

_An entire doorway to hell lay before him, where beyond the bony, fleshy and hideous architecture of the broken world of the netherrealm lay before him. And through the doorway came demons._

_Centaurs with the skeletal heads of horses with antlers stormed through, carrying spears with wicked barbed blades and others with large bows and quivers strung to their backs. Imps of varying sizes, including brutes and lashers lumbered and charged through. Armoured footsoldiers and the black armoured taller guards rode into battle on their horses with fleshless heads, and others came on black salivating hounds with reptilian hides and lolling tongues._

_They ran towards Sebastian, and he lifted his hands, ready to grapple with one and rip a weapon from their claws. But they ignored him, buffeting him and snapping at him and shoving him aside. He was nothing to them, he realised. Nothing when an entire city to plunder and ravage lay right before them._

_And behind him, he saw them join with another dark army. They shambled and tottered towards the city wall, moving more like puppets on jerky strings than men. Their eyes were pale blue, and their skin was rotting and stretched along with their faces, yet their armour was ancient, black and horned like the narudic raiders of old, and they carried cruel, rusted weapons in their bony hands. And high above them, the behemoth pale-helmed crow soared above them, his undead army under his wing._

_To his left, he saw what he could only describe as a horde of the snapping, hunch-backed and knuckle walking predators, more a teeming mass of darkness itself than anything living. They piled over themselves, clawing over each other to race towards the already burning city. Further along, he saw a cold, enormous cloud, stirred up by the snow brought by an army of ice giants, thick limbed and bearded and armed with shards of ice shaped like swords and axes, lumbering towards the city. They were flanked by a multitude of smaller men, holding spears of crystal ice, and as cold and emotionless in their appearance._

_Sebastian turned to his right, and beyond the crow’s army of the undead warriors, he saw the army of knights, holding the banner of a black dragon on a field of violet on their standards, each one dressed as a holy knight, armed with spears and lances and swords, their faces concealed by helmets, their surcoats covered in strange symbols and a winged black dragon rearing up like his country’s own golden dragon._

_“No…”Sebastian repeated. “Not my home! Not my home!” He turned towards the tall demon lord._

_“Not my home!” He roared, and he sprinted forward._

_He ran towards an imp with a large falchion like blade, and grabbing the handle with his left hand, he punched the imp with his right hand so hard that its helm-covered head snapped back. It fell to the ground with a wretched whimper and Sebastian ripped the notched, crudely forged weapon free from its clasp. Lifting it high, he ran headlong towards the demon lord._

_With a bloodthirsty yell, he sprinted across the ground towards the fire, towards the demon lord. He would save his home, and he would start by cutting down the architect of the suffering of his home. Bury this thick blade right in the bastard’s chest!_

_“You dare…” The monster in the heavy cloaked robe stepped back, lifting his hand as if he had touched something repulsive, or as if a rat had dared to run at his feet._

_A few more steps, and then…_

_There was the sound of a whip, the buzz of raw energy and then something snagged on his stolen sword. Sebastian looked up to see cords, glowing cords of violet, thrumming energy wrapped around the width and span of his stolen blade. Then they ripped backwards, and Sebastian was pulled back. The force of the throw was so immense he tumbled hard and painfully across the smooth, unblemished earth, rolling on his side for a few feet before coming to rest on his front again._

_Grunting, he pulled himself up, swaying on his unsteady feet. And with his weapon still in hand, he looked up at the foe that stopped him from attacking the demon lord._

_  
Before him stood a woman, dressed in ancient old kingdom regnyan robes, with stretches of thick silk covering her chest and her belly, revealing only the sides of her pale grey flesh. Her robes, tied by a cord of fine serpentine leather and secured to her upper robe by a cord to her scarab beetle brooch. Her arms were bare, lithe and sleek, and her hands sported untrimmed claws, nails like talons almost a foot-long in length. Her right nails trailed cords of glowing violet energy, and Sebastian realised that it was her who had pulled him away with such brute strength.  
  
_

_Her face revealed nothing of her identity to him, if he knew her at all, for it was concealed behind a grey mask with a burgundy strip across the eyeholes, and a stripe that tapered to a thin point along the front and centre of it. Violet, unblinking eyes were fashioned where the woman’s eyes would be. The mask left only her ears and the back of her head exposed, her circular, golden hairdress, a crest that held a mountain of black hair within a golden cage._

_“Kill him…my love.” The tall demon lord with the cane demanded._

_Sebastian hesitated for a moment, but upon seeing the demon lord and the unmoving masked woman, and the screams and the sound of burning in his home city behind him, he knew he had no choice._

_So be it. If I must cut her down, I will._

_So with a cry of renewed zeal, he ran at her, this guardian, this concubine sorceress of the demon perhaps. He readied himself to dodge or roll under any charm or curse she shot his way._

_Yet she did nothing. She only opened her arms, her claws out-stretched, as if to welcome him, or embrace him as a lover. Sebastian grit his teeth and quickened his pace. If she did not move, he would cut her down where she stood._

_Sebastian closed the gap, lifting his sword high, moving too fast now to dodge. He swung down towards the woman’s left shoulder, one strong strike to cleave through her chest and heart._

_The woman turned to her left and side-stepped the blade, dancing gracefully out of his blade’s reach on black sandalled feet. She span behind him and Sebastian hurried to right his footing and turned, aiming at her neck with a swing to his right-_

_And with one swipe of her claws, brimming with crackling, lightning magic, the woman slashed his blade into four shards with one swipe of her left hand. They clattered to the ground about his feet._

_Sebastian was too occupied with studying the remains of his sword in his hand to see the killing blow. He looked ahead only to see the woman lunge low with her right hand, straight towards his torso below his ribcage._

_Her claws punched through his skin, and thrust up. Her entire hand up to the elbow speared through his guts, his stomach and his lungs, and pierced into his very heart in one squelching, wet thrust of flesh ripping under her nails._

_Sebastian winced. Gasped. Tried to breathe…tried to swallow, and could not. Copper red filled his mouth as he choked on his own blood where he stood, staring into the impassive violet eyed mask of his killer._

_The woman titled her head to the side, as if examining an object that intrigued her in passing. Then Sebastian felt a tugging, pulling sensation, pain deep in his chest as her nails clawed the insides of his chest and lungs. Then the woman ripped her hand away, and the pulling sensation became one burning, tearing sensation in his chest._

_Sebastian staggered back two steps, and glanced at the bloody hand of the sorceress, the quivering, twitching red mass in her hand._

_My heart…she’s taken my heart…_

_The masked sorceress looked down at her prize, studying it as it twitched in the palm of her hand, blood spurting from its severed tubes. Her pale right arm was soaked with red gore up to the elbow, and with a burst of lightning up her arm, she clenched her fist, and crushed the heart with her nailed fingers. Gore and pulped muscle and blood spattered the front of her dress and her mask, before she turned her hand and let go, dropping the shrivelled remainder to the floor._

_Sebastian gasped, all life in him ripped out from his chest, and fell to his knees. He reached up, feebly gripping at something, anything of her. He clutched at the leaking hole in his abdomen with his right hand while reaching for her with his left, and then fell, his fingertips only brushing the soft silk of her skirt._

_He now lay on the ground, his eyes seeing on the burning towers of his home, and the woman who killed him walking away from him._

_The armies of ice, hellfire, death, shadow and war fell upon his city, streaming in and consuming it with butchery and fire._

_And the woman with the headdress and the elegant robes strode away from him, as a black shadow suddenly eclipsed the sky, sending the bats and imps and dragons that flew around his home scattering to the wind._

_The fires suddenly seemed to die out, as black translucent wings like a great bat folded over the three towers, large enough to completely overshadow them. Then they parted, and crouched around the tallest and grandest tower, illuminated by the hellish flames that consumed the city and castle below it, was a shadowy, formless, red-eyed form of a black, shadowy dragon. Too large for Sebastian to comprehend or to understand, as its pointed tail curled around the base of his tower._

_Its head was horned with two massive horns, curved and pointing backwards, and its head was thick and stout, tapering to a thin, almost avian, crocodilian snout. It surveyed the devastation and ruin before it, opening its jaws to reveal black fangs, gleaming in the firelight, pleased with the destruction wrought in its godless name. Then lifting its horned head, the shadowy dragon opened its maw to let loose a roar that began as a terrible rumble, ethereal and howling, before rising to a crescendo, an unholy peal of the screaming souls it had consumed in its feasting._

_The woman stood still, and raised her arms wide, tilting her head back as if to embrace the screaming formless terror that had perched on the towers of his home. The dark dragon’s roar cut through his soul, and would have stopped his heart cold dead if he still held one in his chest. The dragon continued its horrific, soul-rending scream, lifting its lean skull to the skies to curse the very foundations of heaven itself-_

And Sebastian gasped, and writhed in Callidor’s grip, shaking his head, desperately clenching his eyes shut, begging for the screaming roar of the soulless monster to end as it railed in his ears, and the sound of boots tramping towards his home and his city.

“My, my…” Callidor weakly mocked. “What a…traumatic…little vision we had there…but take heart.”

He was aware of the fetid breath of Callidor as he leaned in, close to the uncovered left side of his neck, a patch bare between Callidor’s thumb and his chainmail shirt’s collar.

“You will not live long to witness it…”

And with a bloodthirsty hiss, Callidor leaned close to his neck, opening his jaws wide enough to bite into his neck and-

“Take your hands off my son!”

Sebastian heard Father’s voice roaring behind him, and then a pulling sensation, as Callidor’s hand and mouth withdrew from his neck. Sebastian gasped for breath, cold air stinging his lungs as he collapsed onto the ground, coughing and staggering away as Father finished shoving and dragging Callidor away, before joining his hand to the bottom of his sword handle. Callidor opened his mouth to roar at Artovius at the top of his hoarse lungs. And the king beheaded the demon priest with one swing of his sword.

Callidor’s remaining hand swiped fruitlessly at the air, before his legs tottered back and he collapsed on his back on the ground. Dead. For good this time.

Artovius turned to regard his left pauldron, which Sebastain realised was on fire, and he patted it out with a heavy slap of his gauntlet, regarding the headless corpse of Callidor one more time, before turning towards him.

Sebastin was aware that it was now cooler, meaning perhaps that the fire wall was dissipating, but Father’s shoulder…did he jump through the wall to save him…?

Father walked to his left side and knelt down with some difficulty, before he sat down at his side. His line, aged face was a comfort to him, after…after everything that had just transpired.

“Are you alright?”

“Father, I…” Sebastian’s words failed him. His own heart was pounding in his chest, and his breath was rapid and shaky. He swallowed, wetting his dry throat, and lifted his right hand to take Father’s own when he lowered it towards him.

“I…”

“Its alright…he’s dead.” Father assured him, managing to squeeze his hand under his gauntlet. “He can no longer hurt you.”

Sebastian nodded. “Or anyone else…ever again.”

He looked up at Father’s eyes, full of love and concern and understanding.

“Father, Cal-Callidor, he…he showed me…”

“Easy.” Father silenced him by opening his hand and patting Sebastian’s gauntlet. “It was just a vision, to render you defenceless against his trickery. Tell me later. You’ve done more than enough today.”

Sebastian nodded.

“I’m sorry…he took the children but I managed to free them. But then I saw that he was about to escape and I thought…”

“I know, I know.” Father assured him before looking up at the headless corpse before them. There was the sound of several armoured footsteps around him, and Sebastian was aware of a handful of knights around him.

“My king?” Tobias’s voice boomed under his helm. Father looked up at him and then pointed at the peons, still chanting and gesturing frantically at the air to manifest their portal. Callidor’s death most likely dashed their wretched morale.

“Knights, kill the peons! Let not one of them escape! Get some rope and collapse the portal, now!” He roared at the top of his lungs.

Sebastian felt the warmth of relief flood his chest as the knight responded with their respectful address to the king, bowing their helmets and then advancing towards the peons, drawing their swords and maces. He looked away from the carnage, trying to mentally blot out the sounds of the peon’s dying screams as the knights ran them through and brained the last of Callidor’s forces.

“It’s over, son.” Father assured him, lifting his hand to stroke his hair. “It’s over.”

“Get some rope! Squire! Rope for the archway! We need to bring it down!” Tobias yelled behind him.

Then the sound of heavy panting and a huge narrow snout with a lolling tongue came into his vison. It bowed its head, filling his nose with its black nostril, snuffling and then licking his bearded face with a soft pink, and huge tongue, and the rank odour of demon blood.

“Pos…” Sebastian sighed with relief. “Oh, dog, your breath…”

“Mwrmm…” Pos replied and snuffled more of his face, before stepping back and lying down, his enormous bulk blocking out the entire right side of his vision as he lay down to rest by his side, continuing to pant. Sebastian lifted his right arm to scratch at his enormous shoulder.

“Good boy….good boy.” He spoke breathlessly, the vulfhound’s presence an easy source of emotional comfort for him.

_Just a day with him sleeping on my bed, listening to his soft snores and I’ll be ship-shape in no time…_

“It seems we will have a lot of explaining to do with your mother once we get back.” Father spoke, regarding the chaotic scene around him, with the brute’s body behind him, Callidor’s headless, one armed corpse in front of him, and now the bodies of the hooded peons around the arch. The knights had found rope and were now tying it around the bottom rocks of the crudely erected archway.

Artovius glanced down at Callidor’s body again.

“A pity we killed him. Alive, he could have answered some questions about his master.”

Sebastian felt rueful at the retrospective wisdom of his actions.

“I…I provoked him into attacking me. You would not have had to come to my defence if I didn’t-”

Father’s hand on his shoulder halted him.

“Son, it’s alright. I would sooner scold you for risking your life so recklessly, but you handled yourself well, and now, Astalloth no longer has an archpriest, and the families of those in his bondage are safe, as well as the children. It is cause for much celebration indeed.” He smiled down at him and Sebastian smiled back.

Good cause indeed.

Father opened his mouth to speak again, but Pos’s sudden growl halted whatever words he was about to say. Pos had seen something, and like before against the demons his hackles were raised and his eyes were staring intent at…

At the portal.

The knights and their squires who had ridden with them had finished fastening their rope, and were beginning to pull at the rocks, when an invisible wave swept across the ground, rustling the robes of the dead peons strewn across the ground.

The knights froze where they stood, trembling, while the squires stopped pulling, wondering what was wrong with the knights they served under.

Then the knights, all eight of them, all fully armoured with great-helms and surcoats and chainmail shirts, began to rise, and in so doing let go of the rope. The squires called out and milled about in panic. Father pushed himself up to his feet.

“Son, stay where you are!” He commanded, and held his sword at the ready as he strode forward, wary as the knights continued to rise.

They were completely immobilised, their arms unwilling to reach for their rondels or swords, grunting through their masks as they thought to no avail to free themselves of the grip that held them so.

Then a terrible whining noise filled the air, rising first from a low hum to a louder and higher pitch, and the knights began to contort and twist where they stood suspended in the air.

Then Tobias’s helmet began to crush and buckle, and his breastplate and pauldrons began to follow suit. His leg armour and his poleyns and sabatons began to buckle and warp as well.

Then they began to crumble, and fold and crush into themselves as if being devoured from within, but the armour remained intact, and at the sound of muffled screaming and blood beginning to pour through the gaps in the plates, Sebastian realised to fresh horror that their armour was being used to crush them from the outside in.

The whining drone grew higher, and so too did the force being applied to the knight’s armour. The elbow and knee joints twisted and cracked. The pauldrons crumpled like cheap tin, and the screaming grew even higher, louder and more agonised, as the helms began to grew smaller and smaller, crunching like screwed up paper.

Their bodies then became twisted masses of steel, dripping gallons of blood, raining down on the faces of the squires who cried out and held their mop-cut heads and wailed in grief at their masters being crushed into a pulpy mess of bone and blood.

Then the armour folded smaller, and the bodies became mangled, bleeding balls of steel fused with cracking bone and flesh. The noise made two of the squires turn and vomit into the grass, while others fell to their knees, holding their heads in pain while another curled up into a foetal ball, rocking and sobbing where he lay.

Finally the droning stopped, and the crumpled balls of what remained of the knights lay suspended in the air. Then another wave, sweeping through the air like an eerie gale, flung the knight’s ruined corpses away. Some landed on the cliff to tumble amongst the army as they picked off the survivors, and others tumbled down the cliffs, discarded like rotting apples.

“God…” Sebastian gasped. He reached up and kept a grip of Pos’s fur where he lay, hoping that perhaps that would dissuade him from rushing whatever it was that killed the knights in such a cruel fashion. His growls vibrated through his arm, making his very bones shake.

He stared at the portal, as Father stopped amongst the grieving and weeping squires, staring at the portal. He said something that Sebastian could not hear to the squires, and in twos and threes, the squires picked themselves and each other up, some covered with a a shirt of chainmail and others with thick jackets with metal studs sewn into them, and ran away from the portal.

“Tobias…Tobias…” Jamison, the aforementioned knight’s squire, was weeping as he ran past him and Pos, echoing others in their shock and grief.

Artovius stood before the portal, its height now that of thirty feet, menacing and imposing. The portal was now complete, yet only reddish, black darkness lay beyond the shimmering ether, bordered by red fiery energy.

Then it brightened, and before Father, stood with only his sword and his armour to protect him, a wall of fire, bright enough to make him recoil, opened through the portal.

And in the portal, partially obscured by the shadows, stood him.

His grey robe concealed all of his unnaturally tall form, lean and gaunt. His eyes glowed red like gemstones filled with murder and fire, not as vibrant or incensed with vengeance as the dark dragon in Sebastian’s vision, but sinister and cruel. He stood tall, easily at ten feet in height, and Sebastian knew without a doubt that this was the demon lord that he saw in the vision, the one he tried to confront, before that…woman stopped him.

The reason that he could not make out his face, in the vision or in this moment was because the demon wore a helmet, one that covered the entirety of his face save for the horns at the sides of his head, curled and ringed like ornate ram horns. In his right hand, he held a black, twisted cane that rose from his obscured feet to his hip, likely that of iron or obsidian. Though his mask concealed his face, Sebastian could feel his eyes searching, only to stop at the headless corpse of Callidor.

Then his eyes turned to look on Sebastian, and he knew that the demon had affixed his gaze on him, focusing on him with every ounce of vile, cruel intent he could muster.

The authority upon which this cloaked, helmeted lord carried himself, the unhurried deliberate attention in his stance…he could be none other than a demon lord. And not just any lord.

“Astalloth.” Father spoke, loud enough for Sebastian to hear from where he lay.

And at the name being spoken, the cloaked demon lord looked down at Father. His eyes narrowed with disdain upon meeting the eyes of his proud, noble father.

Then his eyes looked back up, searching past the king to meet Sebastian’s eyes again. Then slowly, with purpose and darkness clouding around his helmeted head, he began to lift his left hand. The sleeve lowered, exposing a grey-green, reptilian hand with black narrow claws. The fingers remained partially closed, with his fore-finger and his thumb open, as if clutching for something.

Sebastian was too exhausted, too weak to crawl away from his reach, and to his horror he began to feel a pull, tendrils of demonic magic begin to curl around his legs, his back and his neck. He gasped, a noise of terror escaping his mouth, as the pull of the demon lord’s magic began to pull him towards the portal. Towards Astalloth.

Father saw, glancing at himself to see if any magic was being worked against him, before Pos’s whines caught his attention. Sebastian kicked at the floor, grabbing and losing his grip on Pos’s fur. Pos saw, and looking between the demon lord and him, realised what was happening. He reached forward and fixed his jaws on his right arm, gripping it where only his gums could hold his armoured hand in place instead of his canines.

Sebastian glanced back at Astalloth to see one of his middle fingers twitch. Another blast of dark power struck Pos, sending him flying backwards with a yelp.

“Pos!” Seb shouted, and turned towards Astalloth, who was turning his hand, bony and skinny like Callidor’s but larger, stronger. Turning it towards him to bring him towards his clutches.

“Father! Help! Help me!” Sebastian called out in panic. He did not want to be dragged into the Circle of Lust, into any circle of Hell, to be tortured or used to whatever appalling or monstrous devices Astalloth had planned for him.

And Father saw all of this, had seen Pos been sent flying and turned towards the demon lord. He reached inside his golden breasplate and then held it up, ripping it free of the chain that held it to his neck. The rings of the chain scattered as he thrust it up, high enough for Sebastian to see as well. It was the symbol of the Prophet of the Lion God, a representation of his holy staff and his ward against all that was evil and cruel in the mortal world.

“Away! Away with you! Let go of my son and return to the pit from where you crawled from!”

Astalloth seemed to step back, as if the symbol, a silver branch like a cross, shaped like the letter Y with an extra spoke in the centre of its yoke, was a severe affront to his eyes. The pull on Sebastian subsided for a moment, but then he dipped his head like a ram about to charge and repeated the motion, pulling as if dragging at Sebastian by a rope.

Sebastian tried to crawl away, but found the inexorable force pulling at him again, dragging him across the ground despite the handfuls he clawed through the earth to try and anchor him.

Father turned and saw and with that he raised the symbol higher, stepping closer and raising his voice louder for the demon lord to notice.

“Begone, tempter, lord of ruination, desire and hatred! By the grace of the Lion God- your power is dispelled!”

And the holy branch suddenly glowed, and shone brightly, brighter than the moon in its fullness, a light purer and softer than the cruellest sun light. Astalloth’s pull released on Sebastian as he lifted his hand to shield his eyes. The flare of the branch died down in Father’s hand, but he still held it up, raising his sword point up and at the ready, ready to face the demon lord down.

Astalloth recovered, and glared down at Father, and Sebastian was now more aware than ever that Astalloth towered over his Father, and seemed set to sweep him from the very clifftop if he so desired for interfering with his plans, or crush him to a pulp, if his powers allowed it.

 _The holy symbol…_ Sebastian told himself. T _hat’s the only thing protecting Father right now! The holy symbol of Paxath Leonis!_

And so Father and Astalloth stared each other down, unmoving and still as statues. The golden armoured king with his holy symbol raised along with his sword against the shadowy grey helmed demon lord and his piercing red gaze. Astalloth’s eyes narrowed again in vitriolic proud disdain, and Father stared back, unyielding and upheld by pride and righteousness.

Then Astalloth’s eyes glanced at Sebastian, and then back at the king, and he appeared to come to a conclusion or some judgement to satisfy his frustrated ploy.

And his words when he spoke were exactly the same as Sebastian heard in his dark vision.

“So be it.” His words, as smooth as honey and yet rasping and wretched and villainous in its tone, sent shivers down Sebastian’s spine. Astalloth then waved his free hand, his long sleeves flowing after him like a cape, and the portal then shrunk, spat and twisted-

-and then dissolved and consumed itself into nothing. The portal was gone and so was the energy sustaining the archway. Sebastian heard the cracks, saw the dividing lines spidering their way across the poorly erected stones, and rolled onto his feet, cumbersome in his armour. He stood up in time to run up to Father as fast as his exhausted legs would allow, just when he was beginning to step back.

“Get back, Father!” He shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Yes.” He agreed, nodding and coming along with him without argument. Sebastian escorted himself and Father both safely away from the edge, and then turned to watch as the arch crumbled and disintegrated in a shower of shattered stone, fragments upon fragments showering and peppering against the larger chunks that lay broken on the ground.

And finally, all was still, and silent, on Gwnilaff Hill, where once laid a scene of a demon army invasion, and a skirmish where great battle was joined, now only bodies, silence, ruin and grief remained.

Sebastian’s mind still reeled from the shock of the dark vision, seared into his mind by the monster Callidor, but Callidor was dead, and the sight of his father in near danger had shocked him from his stupor and his terrified state. Demons and the priests among them lived to inflict pain, torment and doubt on the souls, minds and spirits of their victims. The vision meant nothing, a mere plague of his worst fears and visions brought to life for the sake of a fiend’s final moments of amusement.

And yet…

Sebastian shook his head, dispelling the memories, the sensations he felt as real and as truly as the wounds of today's battle. It was only a vison, a dream, a mental curse to trouble his thoughts and darken his mood. If it still troubled him when he got back, he would talk with Mother as well as Father, and perhaps with one of the priests at home.

Relax, read and meditate, and train with Davyth, and maybe the Company of Heroes will come back, with another quest or adventure that he could excuse himself from palace duties to 'enhance his experience of the world'. And life would get back to normal. He could forget the events of today as nothing more than the curses of mad demonic fiends gasping in relief. He was ready to collapse and sleep right here on this hill, even if it meant freezing in his own sweat come the nightfall.

He turned to look at Father, who he had come to save the life of and in turn had preserved his in return, and offered a weak smile.

Father smiled back, turned and placed his sword back in the sheathe on his belt, and then clasped his shoulders with a hearty, proud grip. His relief was reflected in eyes all too similar to his own.

His father’s eyes in him.

Father nodded, and spoke the words to end the dark, perilous and strange chapter they had just experienced.

“Let’s go home, my son.”

Sebastian looked up to the sound of trotting paws to see Pos, walking and well and sniffing at the air in front of them, before adding his agreement with a wag of his fluffy tail.   
  


“Wwroo!”


	7. The Lord of Lust

Astalloth, the Lord of the Second Circle of Hell, glared at the master portal archway before him.

There was nothing, nothing that is, which would constitute a gateway into another part of the surface world or any other location within the Seven Circles. What lay before him instead was a shifting miasma of indiscernible shapes, as ethereal in their dimensions as clouds drifting in summeral sky.

Astalloth inhaled through the noseless holes in his face, long and deep, before breathed out through the holes in his visor. His breath came out a tad too shakily for his taste. He was angry. It was to be expected, after all.

The seed of the dragon had eluded his clutches, thanks to the stout hearted defiance of his pious father and king and the ancient but still potent power of the Lion God, wielded through the feeble icon of a Y-shaped branch. He had him. Had him right in his clutches through the power of far-reach, his mind’s eye defying physic and matter to stretch out and ensnare the prince who with the aid of his father had killed Callidor.

And the Branch had been so bright, so powerful, that his magic was disrupted. It blinded him, made him falter to his task. He knew that even if he tried to break the king as he did the knights he had sensed through the portal, the branch would have protected him as well, and he would have wasted him as well.

Killing the prince…should he have just snapped the prince’s neck or folded his body into a ball. He had the range perhaps and it would have been quicker but…

No. The father’s holy symbol would have prevented him from doing so. He needed to defy the augury, see to the prince’s personal death himself, watch the life fade from his eyes, his pupils widening to see nothing as the ghost of him left him through his lips. And then he would have taken that and crushed it into nothing, or trapped it in a phylactery perhaps or a gem, and then destroyed it, just to be sure. The augury would not come true. It must not!

Callidor had the gift of prophecy. Or perhaps it was a curse. It was the result of his actions investigating the occult for means to keep his crimes obscured from the prying eyes of the church when he was being investigated for his unorthodox tastes. He had discovered and used the power of the devilic tome of Endless Sight, but was caught by the local guard because he was too engrossed in the mortality defying power he had obtained.

When he railed about his gift to the guards and started spouting off predictions of where and when they and their loved ones were going to die, he had his eyes ripped from his skull and his tongue cut out. When his victims and their parents gave their full testimonies to the court he was being tried in, he was castrated and fed his own genitals, before being sawn in half, upside down, from the groin upwards. Nasty way to go, but humans did tend to take such things rather personally.

But of course, the nature of his agonising death and the sins he committed earned him a rather comfortable spot in his service for the Priesthood of Lust, serving in the Cathedral of Licentious Rot as his ArchPriest. Provided he led his services and performed his sacrifices and served him well, Astalloth was more than happy to provide him with as many libations of wine and women from his harem.

Except Callidor often drank his supplies of wine dry within hours, and he did not want women. Grown women anyway. Astalloth knew of a brat’s value only as a spy and a mischief maker if possessed at the right time, but even he had standards. The last lot of fresh succubi he had were at least of a shapely age. How old were they? He did not know or much care, only that they appeared young and served him as devoutly as a Vestae priestess did her soldier lover in a grotty taberna toilet.

Vestae…Taberna…by the Pit, he was old…Reminiscing and ruminating over…what, his human life? Or was he remarking on the few times he had prowled the streets of Korbesia, once home to a colourful, decadent empire, now the seat of insufferable piety and the desire-abstaining fools loyal to a leonine sky god who wanted him dead.

He would make it a note to continue his investigations. But without Callidor…

He turned and walked away, pulling his arm back to throw the bottom of his twisted, black obsidian cane up and then placed it down on the ground as he strode across the top floor of the Tower of Inclement Desire.

Zounds, he had gotten side-tracked in his thoughts. Yes, Callidor…

Callidor had extracted from his slobbering kisses over an intoxicated oracle a prophecy. The Grekan girl served a lustrous but rapine sun god who, according to an old legend about a doomed city, once spat in an oracle’s mouth after she refused his advances, causing all her prophesies of doom to be ignored and, by proxy, her entire city sacked and burned to the ground.

That god was dead now, thankfully. Killed, if the black scriptures hold true, by Felgast during his conquest of the entire western side of Herupia. Yet the gift of visions still existed in the blood of his priests, and from the fruit of their loins, one so happened to fall into his clutches at the tender age of six while wandering too far from her parents into a dark dreary cave. Dropped right into his hands, after dropping down a gap in the rocks that is. Callidor used the gift of prophecy, twinned with his lustful fawnings over the then sixteen years of age girl, who was entranced and in delirium from inhaling the aromatic, heady fumes of the incense, to speak alongside her the augury of his doom.

He recalled his retelling of the prophecy to his audience of succubi. This morning he had stood naked before them, lost in a red wine induced reverie to recall the strange portents of the drugged oracle and the perverted archpriest. His succubi harem, a captive audience of seven women, their nude skin and undone hair a tableau of flesh, colours from all corners of the known world lounged on his bed, feasting on grapes and regarding him with their lidded, amber eyes with black slits like small dim torches, sharp grey fangs glinting in the fire-light of the iron torches laid upon the wall of his room.

_“In the prophecy, I beheld the words of the archpriest and the oracle who spoke my doom. I stood alone in a vast empty hall, a great hall in the centre of a dark and ruined castle. In my left hand, I held in my clutches a small golden statue of a dragon. Its tongue was pointed, its head was adorned with straight horns, spikes ran down its back, and its tail was curled with a tip like an arrow. It was on its hind legs, with its front paws raised up as if in battle, or enacting a fighting pose from a standard.”_

_“In my right hand, below the statue, I held a black rose, with a violet tinged stem, and beetle black leaves with purple veins. Its petals were as black as a starless night, yet rich with the sheen of onyx, a fine colour as if bred in shadow, its beauty harshened by the lack of light it received in bloom. It had grown in a rocky place, and I plucked it and held it with me, careful to not prick my fingers, keeping it held in my claws.”_

_“Then a drop of gold, fell from the statue of the dragon. It did not just fall anywhere, I tell you, no. It came from betwixt its hind legs, a drop from its pubis, the groin region. It fell, and before I could stop it, the drop landed, wet as honey, into the centre of my black rose. The dragon then became hot, hot as if it was fresh from the furnace itself, and its pain scalded my hand. Before I could cast it aside, it suddenly fell apart and melted into golden water in my hands.”_

_“The gold landed on the floor, forming into rich, reflective pools at me, but I did not have time to mourn my prize. For the drop that fell into the centre had pierced the sanctity of my precious rose, seeped through the stigma and into the ovary, and from there the black, violet veined rose conspired against me. Its thorns grew long and cut into my fingers, and its stem grew, long enough to be a tail as potent as any dragon’s, so large that it wrapped around me like a serpent’s tail, crushing me with great, irresistible strength. Its thorns grew bigger, and there was gold, mingling and fusing with the veins of violet in the black rose, feeding the thorns strength, making them as sharp as swords._

_“They pushed into my heart, no matter how hard I struggled, no matter how fiercely I crushed the hip and stem of the rose until the petals withered in my choking grasp. The thorns pierced my body and bloodied my robe and speared into my eyes and impaled my heart. And then there was nothing.”_

_“And so it was, the prophecy came me. The Seed of the Golden Dragon will despoil that which I hold dear and turn it against me, and in so doing will bring forth my end. One so mighty as myself, undone by such a fragile, dark beauty.”_

_“Who is the black rose then, master?” One of the succubi, Helen, boldly asked. “What is it that the seed will fill with gold and turn against you.”_

_And Astalloth looked on her, and strode towards her. The other succubi saw his approach and shifted warily, wondering if he sought to strike her for speaking up and interrupting his speech. But instead he bent down and cupped her chin, feeling the skin under his clawed fingers, marvelling at the choice of nubile flesh that the succubus had acquired, stripped and thrown on her own reptilian demonic hide with as little blemishes and obvious scars as possible._

_“Why, the black rose is my wife, of course.” He replied, and smiled._

It was this prophecy of doom that he had hoped to overcome and snip at the root. If the king could be drawn out into fighting Callidor, and be killed in doing so, then the prince would in his grief be drawn out as well, and he would be killed and his head brought to him so that he would know that he was dead.

Yet when Callidor had the gall to open a master portal directly into his room of office and portallium, fleeing from yet another fight that went horrifically and expensively wrong, and Astalloth saw both the king and the prince before him, he felt that the Pit had blessed him with all the wretched devilish luck he could ever afford. The opportunity given to him to undo the calamity of Callidor’s incursion and the failure of his trap and the losses incurred by Artovius’s knights proving the better of his imp forces under Callidor. But alas…

Callidor risked too much in conjuring a master portal directly to his tower, but there was the golden opportunity to capture the man, the seed of the Golden Dragon. If not for Artovius’s and his wretched holy symbol, he would have killed him right there and then. Yet, the power of the lion God through the king was too potent, for now at least. Either their colonial god adored them too much to let them die or perhaps his devilish luck had simply run its short-lived course.

Nevertheless, he knew now the face of his enemy. The seed of the golden dragon, by no other means than deduction by empirical analysis. A bearded, boyish faced stripling vainly imitating the longer haired, more aged but well within his prime father, laid out on his back in his armour like an upended turtle, clutching to that vulfhound cross of his like a toddler clutching a greyhound.

Blood spattered armour and face, clearly bathed in battle, yet on his back, exhausted from his efforts, his eyes looking at his red own as if he were paralysed with a familiar yet gripping terror. He was as utterly helpless before him as a newborn. It should have been easy to kill him, even if he could not reach across fully and pull him towards his claws. One quick twist of his fingers once he felt the outline of his neck to snap the vertebrae into splinters or twist the head in a direction further than ninety degrees by seizing control of his muscles. His life would have ended as briefly as any mortal encounter with him did, and the vision would need not come to pass.

But to the seven blood-soaked gates of hell themselves it was not meant to be!

Now there was a danger, an imminent apparent threat from one mortal boy to ruin everything he and the Council of Five have sought to build.

He had to move quickly. The plan must be accelerated to the first and most important phase, and a way must be devised to remove this prince, this sap of that infernally noble king so that what has been ordained to come to pass by the true master of the world will not be hindered by the foibles of prophecy.

And as for his wife…

“Posca!” He spat, and the scurrying footsteps foretold the coming of a hunched figure, dressed in a voluminous grey robe, dirty, blood stained and ripped, yet large enough to obscure the demon’s features.

“Your Unattainable Holiness. The Source of Divine Beauty, The Desire that Cleaves and Destroys, Blessed be your Morningstar, how may I serve?” The worm peon spoke, dipping his head to the floor, just when he thought the lowly lickspittle couldn’t bow his head any lower.

“Where is my wife?” Astalloth snapped, already irritated by the incessant platitudes the lowly servant was spouting, even he ordered him to address him as such to begin with. “I expected her to have concluded her business and returned here an hour ago. Where is she?”

“She toils in the hills of South and East Cymland, North of the Fenbrook beaches.” The stooped peon bowed low, curling its narrow, stickly hands across its arms and chest like a praying mantis, and his voice was a droning, sonorous noise, honeyed with too much reverence for his liking. Of course, too little had displeased him in the past and such insubordinate peons were fed to his helldrakes for amusement or to his fireplace for kindling.

“Her goblin mercenaries continue to hound the dark elf sorcerer by the name of Melikos. Word has reached me that she has found her quarry and has set the village that the elf hides in aflame in her pursuit.”

Astalloth drummed his claws on the top of his staff, running his forked tongue across his teeth under his lips as he made his decision.

_I must not delay further. My wife will come with me with or without the satisfaction of settling her business._

_The time for her ambitious exploits will come to an end, and I must keep her close, too close for even a boy prince to seek to interfere with my plan and let the prophecy come true…_

_And if the rumours of the second magic sword is to be believed, I must hasten my pace indeed…_

“Very well…the time has come for the grand plan to be set in motion. I will go to my wife and retrieve her, whether her newest foray is concluded or not.”

“Very good, Your Insurmountable Grace. I shall call the best weavers to activate the portallium and-”

“No!” Astalloth lifted his hand up to halt the peon’s servile rambling. “I will take Rudaxes, the red death. And to conceal my approach I shall use pendant portals. At their expiry, thunder shall roar and red lightning will tear the clouds asunder. The skies of the elven homeland will flash with red veins of spidery lightning, to foretell the doom that shall come upon them.”

“Very good, Your Royal Eminence, the Master of All Desire. I shall gather as many as I can carry.”

“See to it, then meet me at the top of this spire.”

Posca bustled down the steps that curved down the inner wall to the floor below, disappearing from sight under the charcoal grey lip. Astalloth turned and strode to the other side of the chamber, towards the stairs built into the tower’s wall that ascended to the top. His cane made crisp taps on the stony surface as he climbed to the very top of the tower.

And beheld the glorious reddish fiery land that was his domain.

The top of the tower was a flat, featureless plateau, and under his cloven hooves, the stone carved surface inlaid with a circular pattern of red iron flowing through the seams like blood felt scuffed and chipped. Centuries upon centuries of creatures small and large using this plateau to roost upon and fly from. And now he would call one of them to him.

Below stood the vast realm that was his circle, divided by shimmering streams of red magma, flowing through the barren plains where only red dirt and stony fields lay before him. He saw the fields of Eternal Toil, where mortals laboured in stone breaking and with mortar and bones and dead wood built pyres and monuments and effigies of varying sizes and grotesquery. The efforts would be inspected and appraised, only to be knocked down by the judges at the end of the day, rendering the mortal’s back-breaking efforts null and void.

He saw the pits of blood where naked sinners struck and bit and tore each other apart like animals with their own nails and teeth, convinced that the strongest of them will find favour and perhaps release with the overseers standing over them with hooked whips. The overseers of course had no such intention of ever releasing or sparing their fighters, old or young from fighting for their amusement, but the mortals did not know that. So strive fruitlessly they did, ripping piece after piece from each other until nothing remained of them, will or body, to throw at their enemies.

And for those too weak to build and unwilling to dare to fight against their masters and be tossed into the pits of blood for their moxy, they were meat to be had by the vales of torture, of which the many imps in his service never lacked for want. Some mortals were pulled, sawed or hacked apart, sewn back together, and then ripped apart again. Some were bathed in the rivers of magma, slowly and slowly, inch by inch, fed sorcery to be kept alive long enough to experience every inch of pain the sensation of being incinerated to a crisp would provide, or dragged across a metal board with spikes and buttresses that peeled their skin off in strips before they expired, were restored and subjected to it again.

Those too young or too old for such punishments, whose little hearts were too frail to withstand such agony were put to other uses. They carried salt to throw on the fresh wounds of the mortals, and carried the trays of torture instruments for their imp masters.

Others deemed too appealing or docile enough served the needs of the torturers and the soldiers in their barracks. After all, killing, maiming and incinerating in his name, to highlight a few examples, stirred up appetites in his fiends just as demanding as bloodlust. And if they dared refuse, they would be invited to join their fellow mortals in any one of the fields, pits or vales, or given to the Brutes and the Tauron demons for their amusement. The hell-drakes often need little crunchy snacks for their offspring as well.

Astalloth closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of sulphur, burnt flesh and burning, endless burning. The acrid smoke and the fumes and the gases and the aroma of sweet agony filled his nostrils, filled his lungs and his cold black soul was filled with the very ecstasy of torment. It never ceased to calm him immeasurably when he took time aside from his business to step outside and inhale the sounds and smells and sights of the screaming damned in the burning lands below him.

The sound of pattering footsteps interrupted his reverie as Posca came panting up the steps, cradling a pale leather pouch with dark string woven between the flaps to keep them joined together.

“Ah, Posca.” Astalloth spoke with devilish warmth. “The pouch made from the skin and hair of the last farmboy armed with a sword and the delusion that he could stop me. Oh, you are good to me, my little worm.” He appraised the peon with a soft caress of his clawed fingers down the side of his hooded head, as he bowed and offered the pouch up to him with both of his trembling hands. Astalloth scooped the leather pouch with one hand, the pale herupian skin in sharp contrast to the lifeless grey reptilian skin of his hand.

He bounced it slightly in his hand, hearing the clank of multiple disc like objects inside, feeling the weight.

“Do you have the dragon horn?” He asked, looking inside the lip of the pouch, lined with the teeth of varying shape from the same farmboy as he regarded the pale gems of the pendants inside.

“Oh- Y-yes, Worthy Master! A thousand apologies, I almost forgot.” The rustle of the peon’s heavy robe drew his red eyes to the servant as he reached his spindly right arm behind his back and retrieved the horn. It once belonged to the skull of an impressive hell-drake named Durgarian, who was so feared and mighty that no thing could slay him except the ravages of time. The horn was a curved pale yellow bone with its point being a blackened tip where the lips would be pressed to blow on. His fingers worked like spider’s legs as he gripped the horn.

“At your command, Excellency…” Posca intoned servilely.

Astalloth turned to look above the fields, to the far distance inner cave wall where the bats and beasts and various fiends roosted and made their cave lairs, to fly from and terrorise the wanderers and the mortals fool enough to flee their torturers in their bid to escape to the surface world.

“Call my dragon.”

And upon his instruction, Posca lifted the tip of the hollow horn to his unseen lips, concealed under his hood, and blew.

A deep, wailing brass note resounded from the horn, and echoed far and wide across the Plains of Suffering and Damnation before him. Posca blew and blew, until his very lungs gave out and he lowered the horn, panting and swaying as he wheezed to refresh his lungs to breathe the toxic air into his feeble, bowed body.

Astalloth lifted his pouch and placed the pouch deep within the folds of his outer grey robe, deep within to allow his metal rings to open like pincers and pierce the flesh of the pouch. The teeth covered hole tightened and drew the pouch shut, enchanted with runes etched into the leather to open when his hand neared the pouch. He withdrew his arm from the fold of his form-concealing robe and turned his horned head to the far cavern wall, miles upon miles from the roof of his tower.

The horn finished its last echo. Then, before long, a distant, booming, thunderous roar that ended with a high piercing shriek answered its call, filling the entire underground plains with the reverberations of its terrible cry.

The entire cavern below Astalloth’s Dark Tower fell silent, a sign that please Astalloth that his most dreaded mount and pet remained feared by everything living down here. He looked on as with a slow but certain pace, something detached from the cave wall, so indistinguishable that it may well have been mistaken for rocks falling from its red surface. The air then became filled with a distant thrumming sound, and soon after, the loud crack of sails of leather flapping through the windless cavern as the hell-drake traversed the empty space with an easy pace.

A low rumbling growl filled the air, louder than the distant roar mere seconds ago, and soon the shape of Rudaxes became clearer and more noticeable. His sheer size was a near match for Doorgarian, and fortunately he was still growing. His immense eyes shone like bright orange gems in the fiery light of the cavern, as he flew towards the tower. Astalloth chose to waste no further time admiring his hellish mount. He stepped backwards as gracefully as his cane would allow him, as did Posca, who kept his head bowed and whimpered to himself. Rudaxes had more than once tried to make a meal out of the sack of rotting hempen cloth and bone that was Posca.

Then finally, Rudaxes drew close enough to begin his landing, and on his approach, Astalloth could make out the dark crimson scale of his hide, with three rows of black horns that ran down his back that abruptly disappeared just behind the bat-like wings before continuing down his arrow pointed tail. Rudaxes folded his wings and dived, momentarily disappearing from view as he descended.

Then he arose, using his momentum to glide sharply upwards. He splayed his wings wide, dactyl like hands with four fingers stretched long enough to host the stretches of leather membranes webbed between the scaly digits. With one more flap, powerful enough to sent Posca tumbling onto his side and blasting Astalloth’s robes flush against his body, their tail ends whipping behind him in the flurry of wind, Rudaxes descended and landed wholly on the vast plateau.

Rudaxes was thirty feet in height at the shoulder, and reached forty when he reared his horned head to survey his surroundings. On his hind legs, his height from the head down spanned up to sixty feet, and his length surpassed even the mightiest of warships at eighty feet long, including his long serpentine arrow-headed tail. His skull was almost as tall as Astalloth was at nine feet and was long enough to swallow a grown mortal whole in one gulp at ten feet long. His teeth were long and curved, yet rounded and conical enough to rip entire chunks of flesh and bone from the bodies of his foes and snap smaller mortals in half.

Rudaxes’s massive robust skull, wide-jawed and lean across the bridge of his snout before widening at the base of the skull, allowing his eyes to face forward, lifted up to regard him with fiery reptilian eyes, the slit pupils twitching as they looked him over. His nostrils opened and puffed bursts of hot air at him, and his lips, angular and obtuse in their shape, peeled back to show more of his lethal row of fangs.

Posca’s gasp on Astalloth’s right turned the massive dragon’s eyes in his direction, and with a low rumbling growl, he began to lumber towards the terrified trembling peon. He opened his jaws wide, already salivating with venomous bile and sulphuric breath as he bared his bone-crushing fangs and the forked tongue inside. With an amusing show of intimidation, he snapped his maw shut with a hollow clack of fang on bony gum, prompting a wail from the robed peon and a raise of his stickly arm in vain to fend off the drake.

“Now, now, Rudaxes.” Astalloth lifted his hand up to the dragon’s snout, pressing his hand on his bony snout. “Posca is a good bootlicker, you will not be eating him today.”

The very touch of his hand ground the dragon’s cat-like stalking across the tower roof instantaneously. The eyes turned towards him to regard him an almost expressionless, yet deeply searching looking of his crocodilian eye, the great orange globe swivelling in its hole, before closing both its lids. He opened his jaws to utter a single rumbling hiss as Astalloth stroked the hell-drake’s snout.

“My apologies, my beloved wyrm. Did I wake you from a pleasant dream of carnage and slaughter? Were you chasing a naughty little human child who thought it could outrun you? Was it just out of your reach?” He cooed as he stroked his nose. Rudaxes gave another rattling hiss and opened his maw into something that might resembled a grin of contentment.

His pet dragon and mount was almost endearing to watch as he snarled and kicked his legs and wings on the ground of his cave, like a dog chasing a squirrel in his sleep. Rudaxes loved toying with his prey, and often after his horrifying raids and inflicting as much devastation as he liked, he always saw to it that there would be survivors who escaped the worst of his frenzied slaughter, just so that he would amuse himself with drawing out their last dying moments, filled with breech-soiling fear and futile begging and praying for help from gods that would not come.

Once he grew intelligent enough to realise that sapient species like humans, elvanoe and dwavaren were the only species that cared more for their offspring than their own survival, he took it on himself to amuse himself at their tragic expense. He would make use of his tail or his claws to cripple the parents of any offspring he could find, then position them to make them watch as he played cat and mouse with any of their children stupid enough to try and run for their lives. He paced himself slowly, watching them stumble on their hands and legs, nudging them when they curled up in a ball crying for their mothers to get them to run before pouncing on them.

Finally, when they tired or he became bored from pinning them down and letting them go and then pinning them again, he would spear the wailing brats with the longest claw on his wing and devour them piece by piece at his leisure, or shake them like a hound with a ragdoll before snapping it up. Astalloth had chosen his hell-drake well by virtue of his unrelenting ferocity alone, but Rudaxes’s sadistic desire to draw his victim’s last moments risked drawing undue attention during a raid, meaning that a fiery affair as quick as a lightning strike was completely out of the question if his dragon was involved.

“We’re going to go find my wife now. Just you and me. Perhaps we may find some mortals to burn along the way.”

Another rattling snarl and his teeth parted to reveal trails of saliva dangling from his fangs. The rotting stench of its jaws filled his nostrils with their rank odour. Then with a low moan, Rudaxes dutifully lowered to his haunches, pressing his muscular torso to the ground. Astalloth regarded the immense and terrible form of one of Athiral’s apex predators.

Rudaxes’s body under his muscular wings was a barrel shaped ribcage that was large enough to house an entire bull if he so desired it, with back legs that were double jointed around the ankle that hosted three toed feet with black claws on the end, and an inward curved claw on the inner ankle. His head was crowned with an array of spiked horns like a bony crown, curved and cruel in their regal appearance with two larger horns that might appear as ears on a vulf. With his eyes brimming with bloodlust and hatred for all beings living, eager to burn their bodies and snap them up, ash and cooked flesh all like roasted meat, he serves as one of the most terrible abominations that hell could spawn, the abhorrent mockery of the gods and the steeds upon which the angels rode in the war against Felgast.

Astalloth stepped around the right wing of the crimson dragon, who folded his wing dutifully to his side, then opened it again to allow him to approach his side unhindered by his great wing. Posca suddenly reappeared, scuttling as fast as he could manage towards the dragon from behind, and intercepted Astalloth, only to fall on his hands and knees along side the dragon’s flank.

Astalloth traded hands with his cape to free his right hand, lifted his hoof and planted it on the bony robed back of his servant, before grabbing the back of Rudaxes’s forelimb and planting his hooves on the black shining scutes of his back, clambered effortlessly onto the dragon’s back. He felt the familiar presence of dragon scale under his legs and under robes, and with his legs stadddling the dragon’s back, he kicked the upraised knees of the dragon below him. With another rumble, Rudaxes rose to his full height and began to amble around to his right, turning his immense bulk on the large yet still minute plateau, his tail lazily flicking through the air behind him for balance in a feline manner.

Astalloth heard the distinct yelp of Posca and more scurrying about underneath like an oversized rat. He wondered to himself if this would be the day he would hear Posca’s last squeak of fear before it was immediately followed by the sound of Rudaxes’s foot crushing his bony form like a dry bundle of twigs. But then he reappeared on the right side of Rudaxes, perched on the steps leading down into the portallium, wisely keeping his distance.

“Posca, if you would be so good as to do one more task for me.”

“Anything for His Indomitable Pruriency.” The peon replied obsequiously, wringing his thin hands and wrists in his stooped form like an elderly beggar. It made Astalloth’s skin crawl, and he considered for a moment maybe tossing him off the tower or throwing him up in the air for Rudaxes to snap up. Then again, Posca was as dutiful as he was sycophantic, and Rudaxes might choke on one of his bones in his windpipe.

“Send out raptors to the four corners. The time has come to convey the Council of Five. On their ankles, inscribe the following message. Meet on the summit of Caelleg Gwenathyn by tomorrow at midden o’clock.”

“Yes, oh Master of Fire and Terror!” The peon rapidly bowed low.

Astalloth glanced down back down at Rudaxes as he stood poised at the edge of the tower.

From here, he would conduct the very storms of lust themselves. From their pens within the walls of his dark tower, he would open the cages built into the walls and sweep up the naked sinners who followed forbidden adultery into them. By the divine law of the fidelity of marriage and the crimes of adultery, they would be condemned to be trapped in a cycle of swirling bodies, unable to meet and lock hold with their lover in sin except for the briefest of moments, the shortest of exchanges with fingertips brushing, before they continued in their path, dashing against the bodies of the wrong men and women, until their broken bodies drifted lifelessly in the swirling vortex.

It was the ultimate punishment for what their sinful lusts had wrought them in life. They cleaved to each other so fiercely in life, defiance of heaven’s laws and the sanctity of marriage, so sacred that not even Astalloth, the lord of lust would dare to break. Now they spent their afterlives yearning and weeping for the touch of their loves in their cramped cells, curled up in the stew of their own feculence, before being loosed from their pens like caged pigeons, to fly for days on the pangs of unfulfilled desire, until their hearts gave out and their souls abandoned all hope for the bliss of feeling their lover’s touch.

And with their return to the cages, their life was restored and the punishment would begin anew, unending in its cycle, for all eternity.

And the thought of doing so to this seed of the dragon, this prince if he dared to even look on his wife with such desire as naked as a prolonged, breathless glance, filled his heart with a macabre, sanguine satisfaction.

“Artovius thinks he can stop me. Stop the fire that is come, and the shadow of the dragon ascendant, that will fall on his entire kingdom, towers and all. We shall prove him wrong, my pet. We shall prove them all wrong!” Astalloth snarled down at his dragon, before looking out over the plains of eternal suffering.

“Up!” He roared at the top of his lungs, and Rudaxes tossed his horned head and gave voice to his terrible howling bellowing vow of carnage and horror on his and his master’s foes. He opened his wings, kicked from the tower and was airborne, gliding for a single moment, before bringing down his wings with power to shatter mountains. And with unfailing strength, Rudaxes bore Astalloth through the vast cavern, soaring through the air on a slow, riding rhythm across the plains of suffering.

Astalloth felt the air blowing past his horns, pressing against his helmet, and whipping his robes out behind him. He clenched the dorsal horn in front of him while clutching his cane, and glance down at the magma fall to the eastern side of his cave, a brightly glowing sheen of lava, liquid fire as the only source of light close to the sun that the damned mortals would ever hope to see, and the only light demons ever cared to look on.

Soon, though, Felgast would reward him with more than just this acrid smelling cavern, this lair in the bowels of the Ath in which his circle ruled with paralysing fear and sour terror from the wretches below him, consigned to their fate. He would have his own glorious kingdom upon the surface world, in which his own empire would take root, with glory to rival and match even the greatest of heavenly paradises and athly kingdoms. The time of the Sky Gods was soon nearing its end, and in the service of Felgast, he only stood to gain much more than his station ever allowed him.

As a Demon Lord, he served as a glorified jailor, a final punishment for the wayward mortals who fell from the favour of the gods, as per their decree for a being too terrible to walk the earth or wonder the heavens.

As a Dread Lord to Felgast, he would be his own god, and decide for himself and himself alone and for his imp minions and his mortal subjects what defined sin and what defined good, for he would have the power to smother any voice of dissent who dared say any different.

He had soared over the closest vale of torture, and the agonised screams and wails of the mortals was sweet music in his ears, their arias a melody of honeyed sweetness, ambrosia poured into his ears. It would be a taste of the endless joys to come, when he ruled his corner of the world, and perhaps, if the other lords were not careful, the entire world would soon bow at his feet.

He let go of the spike and gestured a command for his pouch to open. From the skin pouch made from the plucky farmboy who had the privilege of watching his elf lover and his wizard mentor and his furry griffin companion die slowly front of him, before Astalloth ripped the skin from his very body to put him out of his misery, a pendant flew from the bundle at his command. He hurled the pendant forth, and bent his middle and last finger towards his thumb.

“Granash!” He commanded. “Fenbrook!”

The pendant hurtled through the air, far and distant from Rudaxes’s snout, before it halted where it stood. Then the five gems around the circular edge of the pendant glowed with a searing orange light, followed by the central gem in the centre. The devilic runes between the gem glowed. Then the pendant shattered, and from the runes a pentagram ignited into existence. Red and white lighning crackled around the temporary portal, as the runes ate into the magic sustaining it.

Beyond the lines and curves and runes, a rainy cloudy sky manifested beyond the portal. Astalloth grinned under his mask. The weather for once in fair Cymland would be perfect for his design.

His grin turned into a chuckle. At the knowledge of the fear and horror he would inflict on any who beheld him, from the mortals in the land, to the lowly goblin scum on their bedraggled volves, to his own wife, upon his sudden unannounced appearance upon his fiery red dragon, his chuckle grew into a hearty cackle, filling the air of the circle of lust with a maniacal, unhinged victorious laugh that he knew would echo long in the cavern and the fields below after his departure.

And with one final push of his wings, Rudaxes snarled and propelled himself through the crackling portal. With a crash of demonic energy, the portal terminated behind them, and Astalloth bathed in the thunderous hellfire, crashing around him as he flew now over the hilly valleys and the forests of Cymland.

Today’s defeat will do nothing to hinder his inevitable, undeniable path to glory. Eternal power would soon be within his demonic clutches, and that twisted hope kept his spirits high through his thunderous journey across the mortal skies. His pendant portals flashed and ripped the skies asunder, turning apathetic dark clouds into hellish storms that foretold the doom of all who would soon witness the glory of Felgast’s return, and his rightful ascension to power.

 _May the Lion God have mercy on their souls._ He mused with an ironic, malicious air in his mind.

_That is to say, assuming that Felgast does not kill him too._


	8. Cowton Village

_**Somewhere in the South Western Realm of Cymland, in a village north of the famed Fenbrook Beaches…** _

The fire of the burning village sent rays of flickering red through the windows of the old chapel. Even upon the hill that it was situated, the fire that spread and engulfed Tomm’s home devoured it with such hunger that its blaze lit the entire western side of the chapel like the crimson light of dawn.

Tomm, or Farmer Tomm as he was oft known to the village folk, sat in the worn, creaky pew on the left side of the chapel’s interior, with his arm around his wife Madelayne’s shoulders. The sweat had finally cooled inside his wool undershirt beneath his deep blue dyed cotton tunic and under his light brown breeches.  
  
Madelayne wore her loose-sleeved hay brown dress with wool about the neck and in the seams for warmth. She in turn held Maggie, their daughter of seven years, who was snivelling into her shoulder, and wearing an olive green dyed dress of the same make.

Madelayne stroked their daughter’s head, her brown hair done in a simple braid down the back of her small head, shushing her and whispering nonsense words. Tomm rubbed Madelayne’s shoulder with his thumb, and with his left hand reached over to grab Maggie’s shoulder and rub her shoulder with his thumb as well. Giving her a squeeze, he turned to glance over to his left, expecting to see his spry red-haired son Jayke next to him.

He saw nothing but an empty space, but movement drew his gaze to a tall youth with familiar strands of reddish hair, illuminated by the light of their burning village beyond the thick window pane. Dressed in a brown tunic that appeared baggy on him and yellow breeches, with a woolly shirt underneath, he was stood on his toes, perched on the ends of his leather slippers and leaning with his fingers on the stone sill.

_What in the hell, pardon my language for saying so in your house, Lord, was he doing?_

“Jayke!” He called out in a harsh whisper, hearing his voice echo throughout the tall and mostly empty house. The lad of thirteen years did not move, craning his head full of messy orange-red hair to peer through the glass.

“Jayke!” He called again, already getting impatient at the boy ignoring him.

The freckled boy turned at him, reluctantly turning away from the window to glance back at him.

“Get away from the window!”

Jayke, stubborn as he was, looked back at the window as he answered, in a squeaky voice that was much louder than his, to his dismay.

“I just wanted to see if they’re coming or not…”

“Get back over here now!” Tomm widened his eyes and making his voice hiss to emphasise his command. “And keep your voice down!”

“They can’t hear us from here!” Jayke spoke with protest, but came as told, his tunic pressing against his lean wiry form as he walked over, glancing back at the window as he did and resumed his place in the pew.

“I don’t care. We shouldn’t have hidden in the chapel. It’s too close to the village. We should have just…” Tomm glanced around to the other folk hiding in the church before talking again in a whisper. “We should have just kept moving. It isn’t safe here.”

“But you said Mother shouldn’t be moving fast or travelling with the babe.” Jayke pointed to Madelayne, or rather at the bump hidden behind Maggie’s curled up legs and dress.

“I-” Tomm nearly snapped, but held his tongue, speaking again in a lower voice. “I know I did. I was thinking of your mother, but I’m thinking….that, whoever’s attacking our village might soon come up here, looking for survivors. They’ll know people will try hiding in a church.”

“But they won’t dare shed blood in the house of the Lion.” Jayke insisted, his young teenaged voice full of innocent foolishness. “That would be against the law, against the Word of God.”

Tomm shook his head. If he knew bandits, and he had known more than his fair share, during his youth in the Age of Chaos, before Artovius came into possession of his magic sword and did away with the Crow and his evil forces, and brought law and order to the land, then nothing was sacred to them. They would come into this church as they did so many others, and find villagers cowering in the pews like a fox in a chicken coop, lambs to the slaughter and the like. They’d cut apart the boys and laugh at the men trying to defend their families before running them through and then rape the girls and women in front of the ones too scared to fight and-

“They’re not going to come in here, are they, Daddy?” Maggie’s voice drew him out of his dark thoughts and memories, and at the sharp glance from Madelayne, her hazel eyes full of words that would halt an honest man just as easily as a naughty one, Tom cursed himself inside. He didn’t want to go scaring his youngest now.

“Of course not, Maggie.” Tomm stated, turning to fully face her and giving her little shoulder a firm squeeze, while trying to find a way to undo the latest bind with words he had gotten himself into in front of his kids.

“I’m just saying that…” _Think, man, think!_ “That…they may not come in here, but they might do something else, like try and trap us in here, or set the chapel on fire to get us to come out.”

Tomm immediately wished he could bite his tongue and eat the words he just spoke, because speaking of more danger to a terrified, soot-stained little girl would make matters any better.

“Tomm!” Maddie’s stern voice told him plainly that what he said didn’t help none, and closing his eyes, he looked with a glance that begged her to understand. Maddie closed her lips, her narrow face with good cheekbones and loving brown hazel eyes, and her hair done in a Marsellayan braid that was longer than Maggie’s.

 _Please understand, wife._ He begged with his eyes. _It’s not safe here. I need to tell them the danger we’re in without scaring them to tears so we can go._

“I don’t want them to set the chapel on fire.” Maggie’s small, soot-stained face, already starting to look a bit like Madelayne’s, creased up the same way girls do when they were about to cry as she whimpered her fears.

“No no no, shh, shh, it’s alright.” Tomm did his best to calm her down, lifting his thumbs to wipe under Maggie’s eyes, wiping away the new tears and the old lines that had dripped down her sooty cheeks.

“It’s alright. Listen. We can’t stay here. They won’t burn down the chapel if there’s no one in it. We’ll run away just like the other villagers did, into the woods in the hills. There’s caves up there that our people used to hide in, with the elves and the dwarves. You remember?”

Maggie’s nod gave him further encouragement, and he forced himself to smile, as if it was a game. It could be a game, one that the whole family could play. The bandits might ignore the church, and everyone in the family will be safe in the old caves, and wait for a day or two before coming back down to the village.

“It’ll be like that time we lost one of the lambs, remember? We trekked all the way up the hill and found him shivering in a great big cave, all cold and wet, and it started raining, so we got a fire going, and spent the whole night telling stories and making shadow puppets, do you remember?”

Maggie’s tiny smile and nod made his heart jump for joy, a pleasant ray of warm hope that eased the fear in his chest if only for a little moment.

“Yeah? And then I carried him down on my shoulders and gave him back to his mummy and all was alright in the end. And that’s how its gonna be, alright?”

That lamb was part of a valuable flock, whose wool sold for a gold piece per sheep. Tomm was trusted with his family to look after it by Owen Killory, one of the wealthiest merchants in the Southern lands, who gave him one look up and down and told him he appeared the responsible sort and the right man to look after his flock. Keep them fed, clean and well looked after, and safe from vulves, bears and other nasty sorts roaming the lands, and a nice tidy sum will be his for his honest shepherding.

Tomm wasn’t about to let even one gold piece that could buy a good cut of ham for dinner go running off into the hills to be snatched up by bandits or beasts, and he had wanted to treat the young ones to a bit of exercise to escape the hum-drum routine of farm and village life. Jack was getting into fights with the butcher’s boy over a girl they both had a fancy too and Maggie was getting bored. It was one of those nights that was purely magical, because it felt like a fun and safe adventure with him and his darling wife and the children they made, telling stories and living out in the wild and breathing the fresh air.

It was that same cave that, after Killory rewarded him with fifty gold pieces for his good work and took the flock out of his hands, that he and Madelayne decided to retreat up to add another child to the family, and that child was now big enough to swell his wife’s belly, the third one in a row. No more after this, Madelayne insisted, after a morning of being sick in the bowl. Not if she was to lose a good meal when eating for two.

Tomm held on to that thought, the thought of family and joy and adventure in the wild, where they’d be safe, hoping to keep it in his daughter’s as he spoke.

“Now that was a real adventure, wasn’t it? So if we go now, we can get a fire going and tell stories like before, and then, we’ll come back down when it’s safe.”

“Safe?” An oily, dry, posh sounding voice spoke from the shadows, and Tomm bent his head down to conceal his grimace as one of the other villagers sharing the chapel with them spoke up. Now was not the time for anyone to be arguing against his words, now when he was trying to calm his little girl down. And it especially was not needed from him.

Tomm heard the footsteps of fine, cured leather boots, black and rimmed with brass with a ball of fine silver on the curled toe cap. He’d say the dark elf who owned them would look like a jester, if he was a crueller man, but he kept it to his thoughts instead. He wasn’t raised that way.

He just wished that right now, the dark elf would keep his words to himself, even if he knew that weren’t going to be a possibility.

“The goblin bandits have been quite thorough in their torching of your little village, and have also been quite ruthless in dispatching any one of the simple folk foolish to stand up against them. I find it curious as to why they didn’t run down any of your people who fled at the mere sight of them. Perhaps knowing their low base minds, they preferred a little sport to gutting their prey.”

Melikoth’s voice was cold, detached, and too cruel and lordly for Tomm’s liking. He seemed to view grim and dark matters such as death or sickness or hard times like a joke, or something that was as dull and routine as eating breakfast or going to the toilet. He seemed to be from a family that turned their noses up at his kind, and yet he had appeared a week ago, renting out one of the spare stables for a roof over his head to stay a few nights.

He paid Jed, the owner of the stable, too much silver for a simple traveller to carry in his purse. Tomm knew right from the moment that Jed mentioned it that something was queer about him, right from the start. Folk like him don’t come to farming villages for business or for holidaying or sightseeing. Nothing but toiling folk and cold weather and muddy paths and the smell of manure for people passing through to take in.

Tomm had popped by to the stables on the first night Melikoth was staying to say hello. People looked to him for guidance and advice as he had done his fair share of travelling, some service in the army and building jobs as well as farming, so he was seen as a sort of village head, and he took that as his unofficial duty to see to new folk staying in his town, to strike up a friendly, pleasant conversation and to get the measure of said folk to decide if they were safe and had no ill intentions.

But Melikoth’s attitude, the short rude answers he gave to his simple questions and the withering glare from the dark elf’s night blue eyes told him as sure as death that a friendship or even a pleasant conversation between two neighbours would not be possible. Melikoth’s was not like most dark elves he had the pleasure of meeting, and he was a poor example of one from high society if he had ever laid eyes on one.

And so biting his tongue to stop him from telling Melikoth to shut up took a much larger effort than usual.

His wife on the other hand…

“Have you no heart?!” Madelayne’s voice echoed through the chapel’s large interior as she locked burning hazel eyes with the dark elf. “People have-” She stopped to put her right hand over Maggie’s ear before continuing in a sharp whisper. “People are dying out there and you can do nought but be cold and cruel and mock them while our village burns!”

“Maddy.” Tomm spoke, his hand raised to silence her before she said something to anger the elf. It was not that she wasn’t wrong for speaking up, but Meilkoth gave off a wrong, uneasy feeling. One that spoke of shadows and dark things done in bad places.

Tomm turned to the dark elf Melikoth.

Melikoth stepped from the red and black shadows, his dark eyes seemingly inky and vibrant in the shadowy darkness of the fire-lit chapel. He was holding something in the right side of his billowing, indigo robe, and Tomm knew he wasn’t favouring it because he was hurt. He was hiding something, carrying it all shifty like, like when a thief had something they were trying to hide in their shirt. His other hand lay by his side, with a sleeve that nearly obscured his charcoal grey hand.

“You mistake my intent, Lady Madelayne, wife of Tomm Farmer.” Melikoth assured her with his cold dry voice that grated against Tom’s nerves, with no sincerity or apology in his words at all. “I merely seek to inform your child of the nature of our circumstances. At this stage, running may as well do us no good. The goblins ride great vulves, and will be sure to run us down once their mounts pick up our scents. Mayhaps this…dusty old house of worship can offer some protection in that regard, but then staying here, as you so adequately put it, Master Tomm, could very well spell our doom as well. We shall either be smoked out like game and set upon by the bandits who will rob and kill us, or roasted alive inside the walls and then robbed of our possessions.”

“You don’t know that!” Jayke spoke up, before Tomm could silence the elf, exercising a bravery that all lads his age and wanting to prove themselves a man were wont to show. “They’ll never attack the chapel. It’s against the Law and God will punish those who dare harm His House.”

“Jayke, quiet!” Tomm hissed at his eldest to silence him, but then Melikoth was speaking again in his place.

“Oh? Have you looked outside, boy?” Melikoth spoke in a haughty, condescending tone. “Did you see the men and women who dared take up a plough or a pitchfork and receive arrows and swords for their troubles? Do you not see your home going up in flames? If they would go so far as to set upon a village unprovoked, then of course they would not think twice about breaking the law of sanctity! Foolish round-eared brat!”

Jayke stood from his seat, making the pew move back slightly from the movement, and Tomm spun and clenched the front of his brown tunic with his left hand as hard as he could, silencing the boy’s fight and the protest in his throat with a stare at his eyes that said _not now, not here._ Jack’s eyes when they glanced down at him looked wet, and his bottom lip trembled a bit, but then Tom creased his eyebrows, softening his look.

_I understand. I heard him too, but let me deal with this._

Jayke bit his bottom lip, spared the elf one more defiant glance, then sat down. Tom let go of his shirt, placing his hand on the boy’s knee, squeezing it as a way of thanks, before slowly standing to his feet.

Melikoth was walking, going down the pew in front of them, up to the window next to the one Jack was looking out.

“An attack like this, with such ferocity…” He spoke, in that voice that made him seem aloof and distant, as if he were deep in thought. “And yet, the screaming stopped a few minutes ago. Which could mean that the villagers are all dead…or perhaps the rest of them managed to flee into the hills…”

He put his left hand to his narrow, bearded chin as he wandered in his mind. He had sharp cheekbones, a hooked nose and a lean, narrow build to match his hawk-like face, completed with a moustache that along with his beard, appeared in good need of shave. His eyebrows were bushy yet combed, and his hair, when Tomm had seen his hood down, was cut with a narrow point from his forehead and widened to cover the back of his head, lengthening and narrowing down to an elaborate braid, leaving the sides of his head with its pointed ears bare. His brow seemed to maintain a permanent, disapproving scowl upon it, giving him a mean countenance that made folk side-step him or turn around when they saw him coming their way.

His right hand appeared to clutch the object in his robe harder as his eyes appeared to wonder in his mind, before widening slightly, as if something that made him afeared was about to come true, before his eyes looked down to his right, as if he were banishing the thought.

“What could they be after…what if…no…no surely not. I covered my tracks, I was careful, I made sure…”

“Or maybe you weren’t careful enough!” A female voice, rough and deep and commanding respect, spoke from the bundle curled up on one of the pews lined up against the right wall. Tom and Melikoth turned at once as the bundle slid off the pew and walked between the fourth and fifth pew on the right side, forward into the light and onto the nave.

She was only a head taller than Maggie, but her stocky frame with her burly arms and wide shoes told Tomm it was none other than one of the few dwavaren residents of Cowton Village. Aramea pulled down her grey dyed woolly hood of the robe she had pulled over her head to keep her warm in the cold chapel. Her hair was red, darker in colour compared to Jayke’s with two braids coming down her shoulders with a large bun on the back of her hair. Her eyes shone with a fierce green light and her muscular form easily told folks that she was not one to be messed with. Two strips of hair came down the sides of her cheeks, a reminder that dwavaren or dwarf folk of both genders took pride in their beards.

“We haven’t had a lick of serious trouble until you came along, Melikoth of the Svartal folk, if that is even your real name. Not even a bandit raid to abduct women or rustle our cattle. But then you showed up less than a week ago and the air started smelling something weird.” Aramea spoke with her eyes and voice seething with accusation.

“Weird like the sky always does before rain or a storm. I’ve always had a nose for trouble, a pretty good one even among my kind, and I say that these village burners wouldn’t be here if not for you.” Aramea pointed a wide, strong finger up at the dark elf.

Tomm glanced back at Melikoth, and immediately felt a dislike growing in him at the look of contempt growing in his shadowy night-like eyes. He lowered his head only but a fraction, as if he desired to still look down on the dwarf even in conversation, his lip pierced in a haughty look of disdain.

“I mean it!” Aramea spoke, not one to back down from a withering glare, and Tom was reminded of how poorly dwarves reacted to being looked down upon and treated like children or halflings. “You’re a shady man and a wicked one, keeping to yourself and scaring the little-uns with your evil glares and your shadowy comings and goings. I bet you’re mixed up something deep with the reavers outside burning my home, my house that me and my wife built from the ground up, and I say that the only way to get rid of them, is to get rid of you!”

“Now hang on…” Tomm stepped forward so that he was in their line of sight, lifting his calloused hands up, but then Melikoth spoke again, his cold voice cutting through the air and his words like a knife.

“I assure you, Lady Aramea, that I have no relation of any sort to the horde of goblin scum burning your home to the ground, and my comings and goings were to ensure that should such trouble descend upon this village of little significance that I had a means to escape. If I had not waited one more day, then I would not be trapped in this dusty old pile of bricks with the likes of such simple farming bupkins like yourself. A dwarvaren farming? I shall take the opportunity to say that such a profession with one so rough as your cave-dwelling kind, who are more proficient with their hoarding of riches than they are at sowing and reaping is utterly ridiculous and quite frankly unsuited.”

“How dare you!” Aramea’s voice with a rural longlish accent echoed as she stepped forward, the brass buckle on her large boots glinting slightly in the fire light as she revealed more of herself. She wore another large belt across her waist, and wore a buttoned leather tunic across her upper body that covered her hips, while her stout legs were protected by thick cotton weaved trousers.

“I came to this village to escape the narrow-mindedness of my family who lived in a wealthy and distinguished home under the Ath.” Aramea spoke, emphasising the words wealthy and distinguished as ways to boost her pride.

“But I wasn’t going to live in a city and go soft like the bank workers more used to pushing pencils then cutting rocks for silver. I came here because I wanted an honest, hard working life, away from the judging eyes of city folk and away from my family when they disowned me for marrying the woman I loved. But Granvir preserve me if I have to smack that judgemental sneer from your face for all the times you looked at me wrong! I had a bad feeling about you from the start. We all did, but unlike man-folk, we dwarves have a simpler way of dealing with people we don’t like.”

The dwavaren began to step forward, pulling up the sleeves of her tunic to reveal hairy, muscular fore-arm as her thick fingered hand curled into a menacing cudgel of a fist. Tomm glanced back at Melikoth, who was inching back, and holding the object in his robe closer to his chest.

“Aramea!” Another female voice spoke up, turning Tomm’s head towards the same place that the dwavaren emerged from. A taller shadow stood up from the pew and trotted with an almost dainty air, up to Aramea’s side to lay a slender hand on her broad left shoulder.

“Aramea, not here, not in front of the children.” The tall wisp of the elf spoke and with her other hand she lifted off the hood of the woolly robe she had donned hurriedly in her escape, revealing a mess of sandy blonde hair with two pointed ears and a pale, almost perfect yet too young looking a face for Tom’s liking underneath. Her eyes shone with a pale blue light as she glared up at Melikoth.

“Tithla!” Aramea glanced back up at her wife, her cheeks red and blotchy with rage. “This man is a bloody racist and a high and mighty prick. Who’s to say he’s not running from the goblins and has torn down everything we built by coming here!”

Her large hand closed over Tithla’s on her shoulder as she glared up at her imploringly. “We were going to start a family! Travel to the city and adopt three kids. Two elves and a dwarf to play with the other kids and learn the trade and then go off and do as they pleased! And now we might not get that because this shadowy…sorcerer…” She struggled to find the right word, then turned and pointed her finger at Melikoth, pointing twice as if to pin him in place like a notice to a plaque.

“…has brought death and fire to our quiet little village! Why must we always suffer for our choices, everywhere we go! For choosing to love each other and go the way our families didn’t want us to go!”

“I know, mer Vallan.” Tithla spoke in a soft voice with a Cymlish accent with the words of endearment in her language. “I know. We’ve gone through obstacle after obstacle to get what we want, to live the life that we want, but we’ve gone through worse things then this, and if we don’t hurry and come to a decision on what to do next then the future we dreamed off with the life that we wanted could be snatched away from us yet again!”

Aramea looked back at Melikoth with a vengeful, pained expression, as if she were desperate to act on her solution in the hope that it would deliver her and her wife from the terrible place they had been brought to.

“But what if there is no other chance after this? What if this is it! I say we bind and gag that pompous ass of a dark elf and throw him to the vulves. Let them have him and maybe they’ll be gone and we can get on with rebuilding.”

“We can’t be sure of that.” Tithla stated, always the hesitant kind, the true lady of their relationship if such a term could be said of them. She was always the one to reign in Aramea’s words and fists when things came to blows in disputes, and was often the only one who could.

“For all we know, they could just be bandits. We’ve been hearing about their sort going around raiding towns and even cities before leaving for the past few months. Melikoth may be…unsavoury,” The light elf spoke with a wary glance up at the dark elf, “But this raid could just be a coincidence. Just poor timing.”

“But think, mer dorlan, think!” Aramea spoke insistent-like. “All the places these goblins have raided often had something or someone, you know…special, in them. Like a magi or a wizard or perhaps they kept objects of magic power.” She looked back at Melikoth. “I say Melikoth is a sorcerer and the goblins, or perhaps their leader, is after magic folk. This raid is proof of it. They only killed those who fought back, and bandits usually don’t give a shit who they kill. They’re here looking for him!”

“Hush,” Tithla spoke, laying both hands on Aramea’s round, strong shoulder. “We mustn’t let such fear divide us and let us turn on each other, not when the vulves are at the gate! I’m sure there’s another solution, another way to get through this without exposing ourselves or getting ourselves killed!”

Aramea looked away, huffing in frustration, before returning her hand to rest on Tithla’s on her shoulder, squeezing it. She didn’t appear convinced at all though, as she shook her braided head, but Tithla’s words did something to restrain her.

Tomm had no bone to pick with them for their choice to love and live together, and had sternly told off any man or woman who spoke ill of their relationship. They were nothing but good folk, hard working and not doing anyone any harm, and even putting more than their fair share of effort to the communal farming, sharing their livestock and eggs and milk and fields and seeds with their neighbours in return for the farming knowledge that they were keen to learn.

As for the poor side of the village that they had to encounter, Aramea was too fierce for folk to say anything cruel to her face and Tithla was just too fair and sweet to have anything nasty said to her/ Although, Tithla had to turn away a few lads deep in their cups who thought they could ‘change her mind’ about living with a hairy dwarf lady. Those lads soon learned the hard way, thanks to Tithla’s ability to give a mean slap and Aramea being the perfect height to crush their balls with one hand or send a fist to the stomach, that Tithla was and always will be taken.

But as for those who disliked the look of the pair just by being together…

“And then there’s you.” Melikoth’s voice was rife with a fresh superior and disapproving tone, rolling the light elvanoe’s name off his tongue like a rotting fruit.

“Tithla, a Light Elvanoe of the Alfheim folk, shaming all elf kind by rutting with this hairy little she-wolf. Elves mixing with dwarves.” Melikoth gestured at the pair with an open palm, as if he were pointing out a cowpat thrown at his front door.

“One as light skinned a race as yours, who would look down at such unions, as you do upon my kind upon your lofty perch of Herupian fair skinned beauty and privilege. Yet you sully your kind’s hallowed image of purity and light by mingling yourself with this burying rat. I wonder what your parents had to say to such a degrading match with an inferior species.”

Tomm glanced back at Tithla’s face, and sure enough, her face like a woman with youth beyond mortal years had hardened. Her blue eyes had turned steely, as if daggers would emerge from them and shoot right into Melikoth’s face, and her cheeks bulged slightly as her jaw muscles hardened. Aramea’s face had reddened, and she had the war-like face with her round nose and her brows furrowing in a scowl and mutton chops raised like hackles, that would make many men pray to God ‘afore daring to step up a dwarf in a fight. She made to pull out of her wife’s grip, but Tithla stepped forward, pulling her back. Aramea glanced up, and by the motion of her pull before she halted, Tomm knew that Aramea was only stopping because of her wife’s hands on her shoulders.

“Careful, Melikoth.” Tithla warned with a dangerously even tone, and by the fae if she didn’t cut a scarier image than her dwarven wife. “My parents are dead. Killed by the same monsters that nearly brought about the end of my race as well yours. My wife found me and brought me out of a dark place in which there was no light but she, and I owe her my very life.”

She leaned forward slightly, fixing her in place like a cat about to pounce on a haymouse.

“Were it not for me being here to be my wife’s better half and voice of calm, you would be picking up your teeth from the chapel floor, IF you were lucky.”

Melikoth snarled, revealing surprisingly white teeth, and looked as if he were about to fire off another quip from his razored tongue, when the left door near to the altar creaked open.

“Peace!” An elderly man’s voice arose from the darkness. From the left side of the chapel, out from the vestry shambled an old man, bald at the top of his head, and sporting a large white beard and bushy moustache to go with his grey hair above his ears and the back of his head. He was dressed in a robe of pale grey with its hood drawn down, though Tomm knew that as he got closer he would see spots of black and brown on his sleeves, where food and wine and candle wax had been spilled and dropped by his shaking arms due to his age of eighty years, as well as flecks of dried mud on the lower part from walking through the muddy village.

Father Emile Gregor’s walk, as he ambled down the steps between the lectern on his left and the tall enclosed pulpit on his right, was a bit like an old tree in the wind, swaying side to side on accounting for his old hips and legs. His head was bowed forward on a wrinkly thin neck that didn’t appear strong enough to hold up his head, with brown spots on his pale bald patch. His face was lined with age and his brown eyes had gotten a bit pale and rheumy. His right hand reached out to latch onto the top of the front pew as he leant on it for support, before shambling forward on his simple brown boots of leather, their soles dragging on the uneven stone floor as he approached them. His hand left the front pew and landed trembling on the second one as he drew closer.

“The Peace of The Lion…is in this house. There shall be no violence within or without its walls.”

“Father Emile.” Tomm spoke with surprised relief. “Glad to see you are alright and got away in time.”

“I was nowhere near the village, when those goblin…vagabonds…” He arrived at his choice of words with a wave of his free hand. “…started hurling arrows and flaming sticks at the houses.”

His old bony fingers glided between the space between the pews, fingers trembling like a spider.

“I was halfway down the hill to do my rounds and visit Mister Peterson, but when the bandits started to attack, I had to turn around and make my way back up. And then I locked myself in the vestry, knowing that God would protect me in the walls of his house.”

He stopped on the fifth pew, leaning on it with an amiable, toothless smile with his bearded lips.

“I am pleased to see that you too saw sense in seeking God’s house for shelter as well.”

He glanced pointedly at Tomm, swivelling slightly on his pew like an axis. Why Father Emile insisted on not using a cane was beyond him.

“Even if there are those who…have not been to church for quite some time.”

Tomm had to force down his instinct to roll his eyes, concealing his grimace by lifting his calloused hand to wipe down his own black beard and moustache, before rubbing along his short black hair.

“Well, I apologise, Father Emile. My wife was ill and needed my company. Surely my eldest did his part in representing the house of Tomm, as it were?”

“Hmm…?” Father Emile hummed in puzzlement and glanced at the boy sat next to him. “I…do not recall seeing him here, three days past…”

Tom looked as well, only to see his eldest duck his head down.

“Jayke?” He asked, already knowing he would not like what the boy was about to say in his answer.

“I…I didn’t go.” Jayke eventually confessed.

_Lord Above, Jayke, I asked you to do one thing…_

Tomm bit down his frustration at the boy’s insolence and instead asked.

“Why? Why didn’t you go when I asked you?”

“I was…” Jayke began to curl his fingers together, fiddling like he always did when put on the spot. “I was spending time…with Abigail…”

_Abigail, the same pretty lass who, just because she was the only unblemished and young girl in the village, took it upon herself to be the centre of attention and cause nothing but trouble. Distracting the single lads, and the married ones with her mischievous ways._

_Flirting with any man foolish enough to believe her honeyed words, and that was a lot of them in this village, and being on the arm of a different man every month. Tongue tying the shy and, if the rumours were true, lying with any handsome man or soldier travelling through the village._

_Nothing but trouble, and my Jack’s fallen for her hook, line and sinker, and gotten into fights with other men to defend her false honour and to keep himself in her favour as changeable as the weather. Something’s damaged in that girl, since her father died when she was a girl, and with no strong hand to bring her in line she’ll be the ruin of every man’s honour._

“In sin, no doubt.” Father Emile stated. “A boy his age and a pretty girl like her…too much hot young blood and stirring in the loins, blinding his sense to reason and turning his mind from fear of the Lord…”

“I wasn’t…!” Jayke looked up at the elderly priest, his eyes and voice insistent. “We weren’t doing anything wrong, we were just…” His thick scraggly head of red hair dipped as he looked down at his hands. “We were just talking…”

Tomm shook his head. It didn’t matter what they had done together. The real problem was that she was probably stringing him along until she got bored and moved on, probably to the larger and thicker headed butcher’s boy wrapped around her little finger as well.

“That young woman is possessed by a spirit of mischief.” Father Emile piped up. “I shall have to exorcise her of that spirit, and if that does not avail her of her wanton behaviour, then she is a witch, a succubus sent to mislead and confuse and corrupt the hearts of…the good honest men here. She should be exiled, and if she comes back, she should be submerged to see if she is a witch.”

“She’s not a witch!” Jayke stood up on his legs, foolhardily rising once again like the wolf in his belly commanding him too. “Everyone’s always saying she’s a bad influence and all that but…she’s a good soul. She’s nice and sweet and, and… she don’t mean anyone any harm. She said she likes me and I like her and one day we’re gonna get married and have children and, and I’ll make an honest woman of her!”

“Jayke!” Madelayne spoke up. “Sit down before you make a bigger fool of yourself!”

Tomm couldn’t help but laugh, covering his face at Jayke’s eagerness. He remembered all too well when he was like that, trying to be all valiant and brave like the men and elf knights who sometimes rode through their village. Jayke’s bluster vanished as soon as it appeared at the harsh tone of Maddie’s voice, and he sat down sheepishly, glancing at the floor as if he were looking for the courage he just dropped.

Maddie covered Maggie’s ear before she leaned forward and spoke with a whisper.

“Jayke, that young lady is a strumpet in the making and will bring you nothing but misery. You’re better off without her. We all are. Nothing but a distraction she is, and not a single good bone in her. She’s probably run off into the hills, thinking of nothing but her own skin. She’s a layabout royal princess in her mind. Not a single day of honest work done with those soft hands of hers! Well I say let the hills and the vulves have her for all I care!”

“Maddie…” Tom glanced up at her. “Please…”

Maddie looked back at him with a look that told him she wanted to say more, before glancing off to the side. He glanced back at Jayke, who was hanging his head low, and lifted his hand to grab his shoulder, rubbing it a little to reassure him.

“Hrmm…” Father Emile grumbled to himself. “Perhaps it is her sin…as a harlot and a deceiver, that has brought this…calamity on us….perhaps…”

Tom strongly doubted that. One woman alone couldn’t just be blamed for bringing calamity on her own home when bandits came and did as they pleased in this world. And the old witch trials were outlawed by King Artovius years ago anyway. To think of the women Father Emile wanted to try, or did try for witchcraft though…

Tomm watched the priest as his eyes darted to his left, and he turned around to look at Aramea and Tithla, stood together with Tithla’s hands on Aramea’s shoulder.

“Or perhaps, it is God’s rightful punishment for allowing those, who pervert the act of love by opposing the Natural Law.”

He turned around fully, bracing his left arm and buttocks against the tall side of the pew’s back and lifting a trembling bony finger to point at the elf and dwarf.

Tomm had to bite down another groan of exasperation, as he immediately knew what was coming. But then Father Emile began to speak before he could try and intervene, and any opportunity for a sensible conversation or hope for restoring order was yet again lost.

“It is your sin that I speak of that has brought this disaster down on the village, and endangers the people of God.” Emile spoke, pointing his finger like a crooked knife at Aramea and Tithla.

“The sinful union of woman with woman, has invited the hordes of hell upon us. God does not like it when a woman…sleeps with another woman, and even less natural, is the union of a she-elf and a she-dwarf. It is unnatural enough for the male and the female of different races to co-mingle, for their offspring are but faithless, lost children with the blood of two people inside them. But your union serves no purpose, other than to anger God. You both should have found and married a man, and done your womanly duty to beget him children, as is what all women have the honour of doing, to serve their man, who they are below, in the natural order…”

He trailed off and stammered slightly, before licking his lips and finding his words again.

“You have invited new, strange thoughts into the simple god-fearing minds of the people here, and have turned their minds away from God by your presence. I have overheard you all, speaking of who to let out, to feed to the vagabonds, and I say, to deliver us from this evil that ravages the village, we should give them you two.”

 _What?_ Tomm glanced at Father Emile in shock. _God above, Emile’s always been set in his ways but this is going too far!_

“I beg your pardon?” Tithla asked in a shocked voice.

“Yes…” Emile nodded, although he appeared to be doing so to himself instead of the elf, not meeting her eyes now as he looked down on the floor, gesturing dismissively at them. “Yes…we must…throw you two out to the vulves, and perhaps, God will have mercy on us, and let us live. That, or you will renounce your sinful union, and promise before God to change your minds and love only men of your own race, so that the natural order is restored, yes… yes…”

Aramea had heard enough.

“Oh, jump off your high horse, you wrinkly old prune! Let me guess. You’re jealous because you never had a woman in your bed, so you attack and spout your bigoted hatred of us when you have nothing better to do!”

“Ari…” Tithla tried to restrain her wife, but Aramea was having none of it.

“No! I’ve had enough!” Aramea shrugged off her wife’s hands and pointed a finger now at the frail old priest who had stoked the fire in her blood. “From the first day we got here, this judgmental, sapless old fart has tried every day to convert us to his archaic religion. A religion, may I remind you, mer dorlan, that told its followers to invade and pillage other countries for worshipping a different religion, preaches a tribal, xenophobic mindset, insists on putting women who do their men wrong to death for the sake of his honour, and honours bloodthirsty warlords and child murderers as their holy leaders!”

“And now he tells us what to do with our love and affections when it’s something we cannot help but do because of how OUR gods made us, and then tries to tell us that we’d be better off dead at the hands of ravaging bandits, instead of being the soul of compassion that their so-called Lion Prophet was.”

“Do not blaspheme in the House of God…!” Father Emile stated, lifted his finger to wag at Aramea, who looked as if she wanted to snap it off at the stump and shove it somewhere unpleasant in the priest’s body. “And do not take Ariav, Son of the Lion’s…name in vain, y-you…you-”

“Oh shut up!” Aramea snapped at him. “Just shut up, shut up, shut up! I’ve had it up to here with your piety and your condescending bullshit, and I’ve got enough anger to spare on both you and that charcoal skinned, shady prick…” She pointed at Melikoth. “…that took up residence here like a travelling vagrant.”

She glanced back at Melikoth, and her face resumed her jaw-clenched, war-like face, ready to launch herself at the snobbish elf, before glancing back at Father Emile.

“You want to get rid of the one who’s brought fire and hell on our village? Start with him!” She pointed back at Melikoth without taking her eyes off Emile. “He’s the one that done invited calamity and hellfire and all this bullshit. The bandits out there are after him, and there’s no mistake. Trouble’s followed him here like flies on a dying cow, so I say throw him out and we can carry on with our lives. You can go back to your preaching from your dusty old pulpit and me and my wife will leave come first light and be out your grey hair, and everyone else’s for that matter!”

At this point, there was a whole confusion of voices, as Father Emile began to speak, spouting off more of what he believed God wanted for the village, while Tithla bent down to whisper urgently in her wife’s ear, asking if they really were going to leave after everything they built here. Madelayne rose her voice to try and calm everyone down. Jayke got back up to look out of the window, either resuming his watch without his permission, or, more likely come to think of it, watching for any sign of Abigail so he could go out and get himself killed trying to rescue her. Maggie started to cry again, and Tomm stood up, trying to find the right moment to interrupt and calm everyone down, get their minds focussed on the one task of staying quiet and working out a way to get out, when Melikoth interrupted first.

“Silence!” Melikoth roared, his dark eyes flaring with the ambient light of the burning village, and the murkiness in his eyes becoming more like a dark starry night. His voice reached a volume that was a as loud as a clap of thunder, and Maggie screamed and whimpered. Everyone fell quiet, and Melicoth lowered his wing-like indigo robed arms, before lifting his right arm to nurse the object in his robe.

Everyone, including Tomm too had recoiled away from him, flinching as if his words struck a blow on their very bodies. It was as if his arms, heavily robed, became the wings of some great black hawk that momentarily blotted the firelight of the burning village.

And then he spoke.

“I…should have known better…than to hide out like a cornered rat amongst such…inferior species. Animals, that mimic…the art of speech and reading and intelligence and art, yet are nothing more than wastes of air, space and time. You humans…” He spoke down to Father Emile and then to Tomm and the family, his eyes filled with even greater contempt. “…are nothing but short-lived, angry, frustrated parasites, doing nothing more than devour each other in your fruitless climbs to power and raping the land beneath your feet in your banal quest to reach the strength of the gods who could take away your life with a mere thought.”

He gestured in Tomm and his family’s direction.

“You are, all of you, insubordinate wretches. A pale, dank bucket of piss, compared to the eternal river of glory compared to the elves. My people, who once ruled everywhere the eye could see, and wondered through Middenland and Svartaland and Alfheim as much as we pleased. It is my people, who were the first children of the gods. The true gods, who are much older and more terrible and more grander than your bleeding heart of a lion god, nailed to a stone and hacked to pieces by his enemies.”

He then gestured at Aramea.

“And we are older and grander than even the miserly, gold-hoarding dwavaren, who merely infest and infected the land of my people instead of truly ruling it, with your greed and your burying like dung beetles, long before the human scum came forth to pollute the land. Both of your kind are inferor, a stinking, stunted abortion of a species compared to the first children of the gods!”

Tomm’s sparing glance told him the state of the room. Aramea’s fight had not left her, though her eyes had widened considerably, while Tithla’s lips were parted, and she looked as if she were about to cry. He lifted his arm to cover his wife’s shoulder, on instinct, as Father Emile turned to try and goad the mysterious and sinister stranger’s ire eve more in his preaching.

“You…you, are wrong, dark elf. For you see, the scriptures state that men were the first children of God, and the elvanoe and the dwavaren and the goblins and all the other strange peoples of the earth were made to test the race of man, by misleading their minds and confusing their histories and sense of right, and wrong, just as you are doing now.”

He licked his lips, and leaning against the pew, he turned to face Melikoth at a better angle, gesturing to the altar as he spoke, up at the stain-glass window of the White Lion, sat on a throne of gold and surrounded by his host of angels.

“The elves and the dwarves are filled with heretical magic and heretical beliefs. Yes, yes…They are the heathens, whose role it is to test man, and winnow out the sinful and easily misled. Only the purest of men can hope to enter the kingdom of God, and when the day of judgement comes, the lesser races shall be cleansed, from the earth, so it can be made right and whole for God’s chosen people.”

“How can you say such things!” Tithla stepped forward, meeting Father Emile’s eyes, which looked to be viewing her like a walking talking pest, with her own eyes, disbelieving what the old man was saying. “Our gods tell us to live in peace with our sister races, to share and steward the earth as our lords saw fit!”

Father Emile shook his head.

“That is man’s role and man’s role alone. Your kind are but a fanciful distraction. The Elvanoe and Dwavaren are too long lived and too abundant now to truly fear God, too filled with heresy and heathen ways. That is why God saw fit to send down the black devil Felgast, just as he sends these bandits, to cleanse the planet of the false believers and the infidels.”

“Father Emile!” Tomm stepped forward, lifting his hand to try and silence him. “You cannot just say such things!”

“I can and I will.” Father Emile insisted with a nod of his wrinkled aged head. “It is what the Holy Book states and the wisdom of the teachers. The elves were a mistake of God, as were the dwarves, so Felgast was the devil and a necessary one, just like the ones living under this Ath, made by God to put right that mistake. All devils exist by God’s allowance to punish mortals for their sins, and even God himself has played his hand in the floods and storms of nature to sweep the land clear of sin and those who displease him.” He finished with a sweep of his arm, his robe flapping about his wrist as he did so to demonstrate his words.

“Father Emile!” Tithla yelled, now just as angry as Aramea. “I treated your gout leg with the medicine of my people, because I saw how much the village loves you, and this is how you repay me! With words of hatred and speaking of my peoples’s…genocide, as if it were a blessing by your loving God! Felgast was…” She shook her head in disbelief as she reeled from the old man’s words before carrying on.

“Felgast was a monster who was the enemy of all life, and your prophet Ariav, the first man and his lion Barayfax defeated him and drove him off into eternal darkness. He saved the world and all of our people with his sacrifice!” She spoke, gesturing up at the stain-glass image of the white lion on his golden throne behind the chapel altar.

“Which is why if anything that our people should be together than apart, joined by a common good and love of the gods. The same common good and love that compelled me to treat you and help you, as I have treated many humans in my life with my knowledge of herbal remedies!”

“Your medicine did nothing.” Father Emile looked away and waved her off with his hand. “It was God who healed me, not your muddy poultice and your nonsense devilry with herbs.”

Tithla appeared to almost stagger, wide-eyed, as if she had just been slapped in the face.

“Nonse-You ungrateful old-” Tithla stepped forward, her pale elven face creased and red and her eyes shimmering as if she were about to cry, her words choked in a sob as she lifted her right hand. Aramea’s large hand lunged up and grabbed her by the elbow. Tithla met Aramea’s eyes with her lips and brows set to weep, before she spared Emile one last teary-eyed glare and then turned away from Aramea’s grip, lifting her hand to cover her face as she wept, her shoulders trembling.

Aramea’s face fell and her eyebrows tilted in clear pain for her wife, and she glared back at Father Emile.

“If you want to see through this night alive, you will speak no more, except to apologise to my wife.”

“I will do no such thing.” Farmer Emile defiantly spoke. “I speak the truth, as my God commands me, and my God-”

Tomm chose his moment to step in, stepping in front of the old man smelling of dust and old musk.

“Father Emile, please…think of the children. You’re upsetting my daughter.”

Father Emile closed his lips, meeting his eyes with the ghost of defiance in his elderly gaze, before he glanced to his right at Maggie curled up on Madelayne’s lap, shut his mouth again before waving him away and mumbling to himself in a voice Tom couldn’t make out.

  
“How typical of the lesser race to claim superiority over his betters.” Tomm could hear the sneer in Melikoth’s voice as it wafted through the air like a snake through Tithla’s weeping. Tithla was no doubt more sensitive than Aramea, who naturally had a thicker skin. Father Emile would need a good talking to once this was over. What he said was just unacceptable.

He forced himself to stare back to his left at Melikoth, hoping to communicate with his hard-set lips and intense stare that now was really not the time.

Melikoth looked away, choosing to ignore it.

“Dogs barking at Vulves.” He shook his head, before sparing a glance back outside at the fire-illuminated narrow window behind him.

“It does not matter. Perhaps at this rate, the bandits will find us, and you all may be of some use to me then. In the chaos as they….begin to butcher you and have their ways with you, I will use the distraction to slip away into the darkness, and some good will have come from your short-lived lives in the service of a greater cause. Your deaths will allow me to escape.”

Father Emile had shambled away, heading back towards the altar, but then he awkwardly turned around and spoke again.

“It is the non-humans who should serve God, including you, dark elf, by giving yourself to the bandits. Perhaps God will be kind and give you human souls and bodies instead of…sending you all to purgatory for being born an elf or dwarf…” He trailed off mumbling again.

Tomm had had enough.

“Alright, alright- that’s enough- That’s enough!” He stepped away from his family, raising both his arms up. He had let the rabble talk too long and now everyone was more scared and upset than ever. People looked to him for guidance and advice and a good word or so and once again it was up to him to get his people out of a bind.

“I would thank you, Master Melikoth, and you, Father Emile, to stop with your talk of doom and gloom.” Tom demanded, staring at both the dark elf and the priest respectively on addressing them.

“Such talk is not going to help us now. We need to work together, as Tithla said and rightly so, to find a way out of this. Maybe a way, God willing, that does not involve anyone being sacrificed to these bandits. Alright?”

He looked up at Father Emile, who only grumbled to himself and continued his walk, back up the steps and headed to the vestry. He glanced at Melikoth, who scoffed to himself and then glanced at his object inside his robe. His face seemed to be caught in a faint green light, for a moment, or perhaps it was a trick of his eyes…

He blinked and turned away, misliking what his tired eyes were probably fooling him into seeing.

“Right?”

He looked at Aramea, and then up at Tithla, who still had her back turned to him. Aramea answered for both of them by giving a slow, reluctant nod. She wanted to help too, as she always did.

Tomm had to accept it, and, keeping his voice loud and clear for all to hear, including the retreating Father Emile on account of his hearing, he spoke.

“Now listen. For as long as I can remember, since I first came here, people have seen me as a sort of chief or leader, in place of a mayor or a lord. I don’t claim to be lordly or a know-it-all, but I’ve done my share of travelling and also my service in the army, and that’s given people reason enough to trust and listen to me in the past, so listen now!”

Tithla had turned around as he was talking, with gentle encouragement from Aramea, snivelling slightly but regarding him with a respectful look to show he had her attention. Nodding at her and offering her a faint smile, he continued to speak around the chapel, his voice echoing as he spoke.

“What I suggest is to go up the hills into the caves.” He began outlining his plan, pointing up north, in the direction of the hills, just left of the groom’s door on the right side of the chapel. “The trees will give us cover, and if we’re lucky, we’ll find more of our people hiding in one of them.”

He waited a moment to see if anyone had any objections, before continuing.

“We then go east. Caldyth Town is but a day’s walk away, and then, once we settle there and are safe, I will leave to personally appeal to King Artovius in Rochlann Castle. These raids have been going on for too long, and someone has to tell the High King that-”

“Vulf!” Jayke’s shrill voice threw Tomm off his talk, and the word took a while to fully register in his mind than he liked. He didn’t expect one to appear or for Jayke to shout like that, and he turned to the window. Jayke, the fool boy, was glued to the window, and Tomm turned and ran down the pew to the window, ready to clip him around the ears if there wasn’t anything there.

He stared through the thick paned window, the outside world a nightmarish haze of shadows and red fire licking up at the night sky.  
  


And there he saw it.

A vast dark shape, almost like a dog, was standing on the lip of the hill. The hill itself served as a barrier to people wanting to walk up the hill in any direction they pleased, restricting them to walk along the narrow mud path that was cut into the hill on Sundeth Mornings for church. Yet the creature standing there had no trouble scaling the steep banked hill, as it stood like a dark four-legged statue.

No, not like a statue. It was moving, panting. And then the flames roared up and there was-

There was a man, or something shaped like a man, sat on top of it. The great beast was carrying a man, or rather, the man-like being was fierce enough to tame a vulf and be able to ride it.

And Tom remembered of course that it wasn’t a man, but a goblin, and he knew what they looked like. Armoured in dark grey steeled armour, covering almost all of their features and hiding their hair under beastly looking helms, and armed with short-bows and long spears and curved, thick-bladed swords and axes.

This one was carrying a spear, a long dark pole-like shape outlined in the hazy light of the burning village through the thick pane. It moved, and then lifted its spear. Tom heard something, a distant muffled voice.

And on his call, more came.

Lanky, lean, vulfish shadows, trotting up the hill, bounding over the bank. The hill was over twenty metres up on a steep incline and the vulves were climbing it and running over the top with no issue.

Soon enough an entire pack began to stream over the bank, and Tomm could hear them. They all could. Yipping and barking and growling, and harsh barks of command from the armoured goblins who rode them as they split apart from snapping at each other. Split apart to begin padding around the entirety of the small chapel, that they had now begun trapped in.

Tomm’s heart thudded in his chest. They were too big, too big to be considered like the normal wolves or even the biggest dog breeds out there. They were huge enough to bring down bison and tussle with cave lions and mountain bears on their own, and in a pack…

And these goblins had managed to tame the fierce hounds of legend, just like the elvanoe and kaltics were said to have done during the old days of war against the invading Korbesian Empire. These weren’t mixed or pure breeds. Tomm knew this. He had seen their reflective yellow eyes in the fires started by the goblins, surrounded by the inferno. These were vulves, the stronger, older cousins of the wolf, and larger and more terrible to behold, with humps on their shoulders and piercing intelligent eyes.

Tomm shuddered to think of what the vulves did to the trapped cows and horses and sheep and pigs, still strung up or housed in their pens. And he shuddered even more when he remembered the old tales of what goblin clans had done to humans and elves in the past. Provoked into war, they emerged from secret tunnels in the Ath to ambush their enemies, allying with trolls and vulves and fire and sword to devastate and burn and ruin.

Some stories told of their honour in battle, yet it may as well be nothing more than a savage’s honour, if the tales of no survivors left were also to be believed. What good was caring for their religion or their code of honour if they were readily so merciless in battle, so quick to turn to banditry as these ones burning his village down are. Spiked armour as strong as dwarves, small tusks at the bottom of their jaws, muscular powerful bodies of green, pale white and mottled earthy colours that could overcome a dwavaren’s muscles and match the grace of an elvanoe swordsman, and against men, oh God preserve us…

Tomm could hear them, all around and through the windows and walls of the chapel. The building was now completely surrounded.

Maggie was crying again.

“I don’t want to be eaten. I don’t want to die…” She whimpered between her heavy sobs, deaf to Madelayne’s efforts to shush her. Maddie’s eyes met his, desperate and afraid.

Tomm glanced around, assessing the room.

Melikoth was edging away from the window, clutching the object in his robe. His dark eyes twitched about and his lips pulled back to reveal his white teeth, as his chest rose and fell under his indigo robe. He had the look of a man in the wrong and on the run, cornered like an animal and afraid.

_If he was hiding something, if he really was the reason these beast-riding bandits were here…_

Aramea was holding Tithla’s arm, placing herself in front of her wife in the direction of the door, though her eyes flicked rapidly to each of the narrow windows, expecting arrows or spears to come smashing through. Tithla was holding her free hand over Aramea’s larger hand, clinging to her for support, as well as trying to protect her as well.

Father Emile was nowhere to be seen, but Tom could smell the fragrant sweet sense of hot incense being written. He turned back to the window, swallowing his own temptation to insult the priest. If he wanted to light incense and pray for their safety then by all means do. He’s done his fair share of help in this situation. Tom peered through the window at the circling, pacing vulves, their shapes like phantoms summoned from the flames to haunt the grounds of the chapel.

Then, from outside, Tomm heard a scream. It was shrill and high-pitched, and short, as if the person doing so was hurt. It sounded like a young woman’s.

“Who is that?” Madelayne asked, her voice full of worry. Tomm kept looking, and sure enough, a vulf appeared, and its rider was holding something large in its left hand. It squirmed and struggled in her grip, and Tomm realised that it was indeed a young lady, being dragged by her long brown hair. He could make out her pale hands holding something above her head. She was holding her hair to stop it being ripped out by the roots, as the goblin who carried her pulled her along. Tom could hear her crying through the thick window and he shuddered inside at the sound.

The goblin dragged the woman, still on its mount, around to Tomm’s left, where the door was. Then, Tomm could hear voices. A harsh, grim voice that was female and the young woman’s. Tomm turned away from the window, and crept as quickly and as quietly as he could to the door.

“Tomm! Tomm, get back here! Don’t go near that door!” Madelayne tried to warn him off doing so in a desperate hoarse whisper, turning as ably as she could in her condition and with a crying little girl glued to her chest. He lifted a hand to silence her. He had to hear what they were saying, hear how much danger they were in, how much time they may very well have left in their very lives.

He crept along the pews, to the front entrance of the chapel, where the vestibule was. He opened the first set of doors, gripping the iron door handle and pushing it outwards as quietly as she could.

“Tomm!” Madelayne, desperate and fool-blind by her hormones and womanly emotions called out again, and Tomm turned and struck a finger to his lips with a fierce stare. He was going to see and listen what was going on, whether she liked it or not. Let her bollock him later. Right now, he wanted to see and hear.

He was briefly enveloped by darkness, but there was still firelight coming through the windows, faintly lighting up the darkness of the vestibule, where the bell cords lay by the front doors to be rung before the services. He crept up to the window right next to the door.

He could see outside, but very poorly. Dark shapes holding what appeared to be burning torches. Tomm’s heart lurched in his chest as he took in the idea that the goblins could simply burn the chapel to the ground and kill them without coming in.

_I need to go back in and close the door, board it up with as many pews as possible to stop them coming._

_But what about the windows? If they throw one of their torches or loose a few of their arrows-_

The voices of the goblin and the woman interrupted his thoughts, and he glanced down towards the keyhole. He decided to listen in, and so crept to the door, placing his good right ear to the keyhole.

The goblin was speaking, and it was a she-goblin by the sound of her, harsh and strong in her voice, yet under her helm that muffled her voice, she was speaking Longlish all fluent-like.

“Throwing the fat butcher’s boy, smelling of pig blood and piss to our hungry vulves to cover your escape wasn’t a lady-like thing for you to do, was it?”

_The butcher’s boy? Oliver…by God above… and the vulves… oh God…_

“We goblins stand by our men, even in death, and you let the boy you were clinging to get torn to pieces by our over-excitable war hounds. And yet you had the gall to be surprised when my vulf tore his arm from the socket! Because he tried to hit her with a meat cleaver. What did you expect to happen? It’s you herupian pale-skins with your daintiness and your insistence on hiding behind your men that makes me sick. But look at me. I’m the fiercest, baddest goblin bladeswoman in the entire company, and you don’t see me soiling my pants at the sight of blood, do you? Do you?”

He heard a slight scrape of armour and something pulling like a cord of rope. The young woman screamed. Tom realised now with clear hearing that he recognised that voice.

“Please! Please! I’m sorry, I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I hit your hound with a pan, please, please don’t kill me or feed me to your hounds, please! I’m telling you the truth, please stop pulling my hair, owhoww…!”

“Your hair’s like a greasy horse tail. Maybe I’ll give it a trim for all the trouble you’ve given us and for being such a selfish little human, eh? How about it?” The merciless goblin lady holding the woman captain wasn’t having any of it, but she was clearly having fun torturing the girl. He could hear the muffled and clear voices of the goblins. The depth of their voices made his very soul tremble.

“No! No not my hair, please!”

“Who is it?” Jayke’s voice nearly startled Tomm, and he glanced back up at his son, half crouched next to his face. And Tom knew the answer.

“It’s Abigail. They’ve got her.”

“Abbie- no!”

Tomm saw Jayke’s eyes go to the door and moved on instinct. He leapt up from the keyhole to grab Jayke by the shoulders, pulling him away as far as he could to stop him latching onto the door handle and dooming them all by opening the chapel doors. The skinny fool will just get himself torn apart trying to save her. Their feet scraped along the dusty floor as he tried to hold Jack back, the boy struggling in his grip.

“Jayke! Jayke, no! For God’s sake no!”

Jayke’s face was strained as he tried to wrestle free from his farmer’s hands.

“No- let me- let me go! I have to save her! I have to!”

“This is what they want! You open that door and you’ll kill us all!”

Tomm was of a good mind to slap his eldest to knock some sense into him. He certainly wasn’t going to die trying to save a girl like Abigail, although he would do it at a push and the belief that any good man would do the same with no thought of reward. But Abigail was not a good woman, and he would not lose his son to some pointless heroic sacrifice. Not when he knew for certain that she felt nothing of the sort of puppy love Jayke had for her in return.

But then he heard the goblin talking and Abigail whimpering and he stopped pulling Jayke away. He lifted his finger to his lips in front of him.

“Listen, listen- shh…”

Jayke stopped his struggling, and looked towards the keyhole. Confident Jayke wasn’t going to do anything stupid for the moment, Tomm let go of his son’s skinny but strong arms and crouched back down at the keyhole, pressing his ear to it again.

“- hear me?!” The goblin bandit was saying. “My mistress really, really doesn’t like being lied to. In fact, she’s scarier than I am, a whole lot scarier. Scary enough to keep a bad bitch like me in line. So what’s it going to be, human? The truth or a lie? Tell me the truth and I might let you go and give you a head-start. Lie to me and my vulf will be shitting you out in a bush somewhere in this Krask-forsaken country!”

“Please! Please do-hon’t ki-hill me…” Abigail screamed and sobbed. “I’m-I’m telling the truth! They’re in there!”

Tomm’s heart plummeted to the bottom of his chest. His mouth fell open in abject horror, and his legs quivered.

_No, no, you can’t be…no…_

“What’s wrong, Da? What’s she saying?” Jayke was asking. Tomm ignored him. He was too busy trying not to scream in horror.

_My little girl is in here! My pregnant wife and son are in here! No!_

“There’s bound to be…people in there!” Abigail was half-choked with sobs, but she was going to kill them all. She was telling the bandits everything. “They’ll be hiding, in-in the chapel! Anyone too slow to get away, just please don’t kill me…”

“What’s going on!” Madelayne was now behind Tom, and Tom turned to look up at her, holding Maggie in her arms. Their little girl, and another babe on the way. His words failed him for a moment, the breath torn from his lungs by the fear that paraylysed his heart. He swallowed, wetting his throat that had just gone dry.

“Abigail’s…Abigail’s betrayed us. She’s…”

He trailed off, unable to finish. Madelayne’s eyes widened, and her cheeks appeared paler than before, paler than when she was ill. She clutched Maggie, still whimpering, closer to her chest, and began to back away through the vestibule and up the nave.

“You treacherous bitch.” Her voice was a terrible mix of fear and fury as she shook her head, her eyes staring so fiercely at the doors almost daring the bandits to burst into the room. It didn’t matter that there were vulves and goblins riding them armed to the teeth. She looked ready to rip them apart with her bare hands if she had to. No-one was getting near her babies.

Tomm heard a low, deep growl that reminded him of the first time a dog chased him when he was a child. He felt the same fear now as he did then. By God, what right have these hounds to get so bloody big?

Tom turned his ear away from the door, and against his reason telling him otherwise, he peered through the keyhole, looking outside the small spyhole.

As his ears confirmed, there was Abigail, on her knees, still in her long sleeved simple brown dress, and an apron strapped over her shoulders and tied to her dress at the waist. She wasn’t by any means beautiful, at least to Tom anyway, as her face was too rounded, and her nose a bit too big. It was her small chin and wide brown eyes that often held a cheeky glint in them, along with her mouse brown hair that she grew down to her waist and a plump body with the proportions graced to her as a young lady that made the lads of the village consider her to be beautiful.

She was holding her long popular hair desperately, trying to stop the goblin lady, a tall, athletic and muscular warrior, from pulling her up from the ground by its strands. The goblin was perhaps the fiercest that Tomm had ever seen, even in his years fighting for the old king’s army against goblin reavers pillaging the land during the Emergence Wars.

Her hands were bare with fingernails, instead of claws as Tomm had imagined, and there were parts of her muscular green arms and legs that were bare, while she wore a vest of shimmering chain mail under her breastplate, fashioned with the snarling face of a broad maned wolf on the front. She wore vambraces with curved spikes along them, like a sword-breaker, to protect her arms, and folds of steel to cover her muscular legs and greaves for her shins. Her pauldrons were spiked and curved up to the sky, and her knee guards were adorned with a spike that curved up, as well. Her helm concealed her face and her head, leaving a single narrow gap for her eyes to see from. The goblin bandit’s green eyes glowed fiercely even in the dim fiery torchlight of her comrades, and on her back appeared to be two straight short swords, sheathed diagonally across her back, one pointing down from each shoulder.

The goblin had dismounted from her vulf, and Tomm could see the left side of the beast, who appeared to be drawn taut. It was as tall as the goblin, and its legs told Tomm that on its hindlegs it would be as tall as a bear. He caught the glimpse of a huge golden yellow eye, and a face mottled with the greys, blacks and brown hues of a wild wolf. It licked its lips, and its canines appeared larger than Tomm’s hand.

“You hear that, lads?” The goblin bandit was saying to her comrades. “This pretty faced coward tells me that there are people hiding in that chapel, and my vulf appears to have picked up their scent.”

The low growl got louder, and then a series of yells, triumphant cries of the dastardly bandits began to fill the air, full of jeers and taunts and words in the goblin language Tomm was glad he had forgotten the meaning of. The vulves joined in, and he could see the torches being waved around at the edge of the keyhole’s view, and more furred, lithe bodies padding around in circles as they lifted their great lean heads to the smoking skies to howl along with their masters.

The howls and cries seemed to echo all around and within the chapel, rebounding off every surface to shake through Tomm’s bones. The hairs on Tomm’s neck stood up. This was it. They were all going to die here, inside this house of God by marauders riding hellhounds.

The goblin looked back down at Abigail, tugging at her hair.

“But now, what to do with you…?”

Abigail looked up from her weeping, ignoring the pain of her hair being pulled to look desperately up at her captor.

“You…you said-”

“I did,” The goblin warrior replied, with an almost flippant air. “But I promised nothing. And in case you didn’t pick up on what I was saying, little human…” She leaned down towards her face. “I absolutely despise cowards.”

“Noo! Nohohooo!” Abigail began to scream in a shrill voice, twisting on the spot in a futile effort to get free from her grasp. The goblin meanwhile began to reach up with her left hand towards the sword on her left shoulder.

Tomm turned away from the keyhole, trying to shut out the world, trying to shut out the noise of what was to come, a noise he had heard too often in his time in the army of sharpened steel slicing into bone and flesh. Jayke was shaking his shoulder, trying to keep his voice to a whisper and failing, asking him what the goblin was doing with Abigail.

Abigail screamed, one last shrill note piercing through the air until her voice broke.

Then another, different and even more disturbing noise filled the air.

It was the growl of a vulf, no mistaking it, but the creature that made such an awful, soul-paralysing noise had to be huge, too huge, and too massive to even exist. The ferocity of that snarl was enough to make Tomm begin to quiver where he crouched.

The growl grew louder, then grew sharply in pitch, until it exploded in a quick series of two sharp, penetrating barks. And the entire group of goblins and vulves fell silent, the voices trailing to murmurs, the vulve’s howls to a pathetic whine.

Tomm looked up, and turned slowly. He could see now the goblin warrior with her head turned to look behind her, her left arm posed to draw her short sword. Abigail was straining to look behind her as well, and Tomm could see, just beyond the edge of the keyhole, the heads of the other large vulves turned towards the direction of the sound. Jayke had fallen silent too, as had everyone else inside the chapel behind him.

The goblin lady lowered her arm, then looked at her vulf, giving a short whistle and clicking her tongue while tossing her head to the side. The vulf padded along to the right, out of the way while the goblin dragged the whimpering Abigail by the hair again, her dress being brushed across the grass as she was pulled along her back.

Then all there was to Tomm was darkness, except for the flickering firelight of the blaze that devoured his village, poorly illuminating the church path that was shielded by the upraised hills on either side. The path was cut down the side of the hill from the chapel and then turned to the right to slope down into the village, and was the only proper way up and down the chapel.

Then from the shadowy, fiery light came a tall, dark shape, padding on four legs with the same walk as a huge vulf. Tomm caught a glimpse of a pale, creamy like sheen to the creature, before it padded out of sight.

Its eyes soon caught the torchlight, and the reflective light that he saw in dog’s eyes and cat’s eyes was shown here as well. And by God and all his angels, they were a fierce, bitter yellow, like jewels of fire.

There was something else riding atop it. Something with purple, violet eyes with no pupils. A low growl issued from the beast, and that alone told him that this was indeed more monstrous and fearsome than any of the beasts circling the chapel. Fearsome enough to stop his pack dead in their tracks.

The other vulf heads began to back away, out of sight from the key hole. Giving the creature a wide berth.

The creature then came into the torchlight.

It was a huge, albino vulf, the biggest that Tomm had ever seen. No land animal could go up against this beast and live. Its snout was long and broader than the other vulves, and its ears were pointed up. It padded more like a jungle cat than a hound, and its limbs were pillars of shimmering muscle, even with their bony build of canine legs, more suited for running down prey than fighting. The black blunt claws however still looked sharp enough to leave a nasty gash on anyone’s hide. The vulf turned its massive head, longer than Maggie was tall and big enough to swallow Jayke in two or three bites, and curled its lips up in a warning growl, warning its packmates to keep their distance. Tomm’s heart stopped as he saw its teeth. The canines were more like sabres adorning the jagged array of canine teeth along its pink and black gums.

Then Tomm saw the rider.

The rider was not a goblin. At least not like any goblin Tomm had ever seen. It was not dressed like the warriors, but something told him that by the terrifying vulf the newcomer rode and the respect the goblins gave it that this was the leader.

Tomm had to blink with his eye to be sure what it was he was seeing. It appeared to be…a woman, if his eye did not deceive him. A black gown that left slender yet strong arms exposed, with a plunging front to that ended in the middle of her stomach. Her shoulders sported long stripes of cloth, upheld and stiff like fins or spines of some dark reptilian creature. On both her wrists, she wore a band of shimmering black and gold with a diamond like pattern with each shape alternating between red and green, and on her upper arms just under her shoulders, she wore bands of what looked to be brass. Her neck, swan-like in appearance, sported a gold neckbrace that covered the whole of her neck to under her chin. It looked to be made of golden plates sewn together, giving her neck a golden, feathery or scaly appearance.

The torchlight caught the glistening of her neck brace, and the rings on her arms and wrists, and rings with blood red gems and emeralds on her fingers as she held what appeared to the reins of her vulf mount, which tied around the thick neck and shoulders of the great beast. The fingers however made Tomm recoil somewhat in revulsion, for on the ends of them, instead of nails, there were long, curved and thin black claws. Her face was concealed behind a grey mask that covered her face under her scalp, which sported hair as black as onyx. The hair was bound in what appeared to be a terrible golden cage, ornate and terrible as a war-crest, with rays of gold shooting out from the centre like rays of sunlight. It was the strangest kind of hair-dress Tomm had ever seen, and looked to be something of a foreign, dangerous and sinister appearance worn as fashion hundreds of years ago.

The mask itself was almost cruel, like a statue. There was a brown coloured stripe across where the eyes were, and a darker stripe down the mask’s middle. The eyes were violet, glowing purple, as disturbing to look on as the eyes of the hound she rode on. 

“What in the name of God…” He asked to himself.

The woman’s black robe obscured the rest of her body and her legs, and Tomm could see sandals on the feet of the woman. The skin…something wasn’t right about her skin. She was human and foreign perhaps, but the skin…it wasn’t like a shade or pigment he had ever seen before. It was grey, not like Melikoth’s skin but lighter, dimmer. Almost as if it was…dead…

The woman stopped with a simple soft kick of her heels to the vulf’s flank, and the pale vulf stopped. All on the hill and in the chapel was silent, and Tomm dared not to look away from the keyhole, rooted on the spot by fearful fascination.

She was looking, turning her head to look over the old chapel building. What was she doing? Assessing it for weak points? Trying to see another way in other than the front doors? What in the hell was she doing?

The silence coupled with the voiceless movement of the goblin’s leader near drove Tomm to madness. He wanted to scream, to shout, to burst from the door and demand to know what she wanted. What was this woman doing here? Why was she leading a horde of vulf riding goblins against his home? Why?! Why?!

He restrained himself by sheer willpower, regretting miserably now his choice to stop in the chapel on account of his worry for Madelayne’s stamina. They should have just kept moving. They should have all just kept running.

The masked woman was lifting her right hand. It was a movement so small Tomm nearly missed it. She was lifted her strange, taloned hand then- bending her fore and last finger down, then her middle finger to her thumb, and finally her fore and third finger down. She then pointed to her neck, poking it with the tip of her sharp claw.

She lifted her voice to speak, but Tomm was completely unpreprared for the voice that rung out through the entire chapel building. It seemed to echo from all the walls at once, by some witchcraft, some sorcery that allowed her voice to speak loudly throughout the whole room. It was so loud, so commanding and powerful, and more terrible than the goblin warrior threatening Abigail.

There was the faint hint of an accent Tomm could not trace and it only added to the menacing veneer of the strange masked woman, nay, a sorceress as she introduced herself, pausing between her sentences for effect.

“Greetings, residents of Cowton Village. I imagine that this night has been quite an eventful one in your dull, toilsome lives in the dirt and hay and manure of your farming home. Indeed, this may perhaps be the most exciting thing that has ever happened to your isolated little community. I must give credence, where it is due. Some of you were much braver than I predicted they would be. I assure you that they died well. The rest who fled, I assure you this, were spared, except for the few cowards, who tried to bargain for their lives with their sheep, their pigs and even their own children.”

“They did not die well, and their children have now been added to my ranks of orphan slaves to fill my cup and fan me on hot days. But orphans can be so tiresome to look after and train, and I sense the heartbeats of children cowering inside your tiny little chapel.”

“I would be loathe to add more mouths to feed in my slave ranks, but more loathe would I be to leave small bodies broken in my path as well as tall ones, or leave them to pick through the ashes of their home to be picked off by the wolves and bears wondering these hills. So perhaps, if you few are willing and able, you may spare me the need for such extreme measures by bringing forward the location of one dark elf sorcerer, concealed as a travelling vagrant with amusingly poor manners under the name of Tavagar Evoodrasi Melikoth. He is in possession of a poweful artefact that is of great interest to me, and I would negotiate it from him, alive, or from his cold dead hands.”

“I would prefer to leave survivors who are able to tell a cohesive tale of my most recent exploits from today’s encounter, and entire massacres tend to leave a bad taste on my tongue. So, allow me to introduce myself, for the concerned party therein.”

“My name is Neferneferuaten Leonipatra Neferiti. Your simple tongues may refer to me as Queen Neferiti, and if you do not surrender to me the person or location of the sorcerer Melikoth within the next minute…”

“…I will storm the chapel…and kill you all.”


End file.
